Former Senator Birch Bayh has passed away.

Birch Evans Bayh Jr. (January 22, 1928 – March 14, 2019) was an American politician and U.S. Senator from Indiana, serving from 1963 to 1981. He is the only non-Founding Father to have authored two amendments, XXV and XXVI, to the United States Constitution and was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1976.

Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, Bayh won election to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1954, and eventually became the youngest Speaker of the State House of Represenatives in Indiana history. In 1962, he narrowly defeated incumbent Republican Senator Homer E. Capehart. Bayh became Chairman of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments in 1963, and in that role Bayh authored two constitutional amendments. The Twenty-fifth Amendment establishes procedures for an orderly transition of power in the case of the death, disability, or resignation of the President of the United States. The Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 throughout the United States. Bayh also led unsuccessful efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and eliminate the Electoral College.

Bayh authored Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which banned gender discrimination in higher education among institutions receiving federal funding. Bayh also authored the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act and co-authored the Bayh–Dole Act. He led the Senate opposition to Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, two of President Richard Nixon's unsuccessful Supreme Court nominees. Bayh intended to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, but declined to run after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, but dropped out of the campaign after disappointing finishes in the first set of primaries and caucuses.

Bayh won re-election in 1968 and 1974, but lost his 1980 bid for a fourth term to Dan Quayle. After leaving the Senate, he remained active in the political and legal world. His son, Evan Bayh, served as the 46th Governor of Indiana and held his father's former Senate seat from 1999 to 2011.