Terraform plan ignores -state flag

gistfile1.txt

$ TF_LOG=TRACE terraform plan -state=terraform/test/terraform.tfstate
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [INFO] Terraform version: 0.9.9
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [INFO] Go runtime version: go1.8.3
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [INFO] CLI args: []string{"/usr/local/Cellar/terraform/0.9.9/bin/terraform", "plan", "-state=terraform/test/terraform.tfstate"}
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [DEBUG] Detected home directory from env var: /Users/justin
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [DEBUG] Detected home directory from env var: /Users/justin
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [DEBUG] Attempting to open CLI config file: /Users/justin/.terraformrc
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [DEBUG] File doesn't exist, but doesn't need to. Ignoring.
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [INFO] CLI command args: []string{"plan", "-state=terraform/test/terraform.tfstate"}
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [DEBUG] Detected home directory from env var: /Users/justin
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [DEBUG] command: loading backend config file: /Users/justin/Source/bethesda/bnet-chat
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [INFO] command: backend config not found, returning nil: /Users/justin/Source/bethesda/bnet-chat
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [DEBUG] command: no data state file found for backend config
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [DEBUG] New state was assigned lineage "96e4a904-5aab-4ba2-ba6e-175ea71447f2"
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [INFO] command: backend initialized: <nil>
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [INFO] command: backend <nil> is not enhanced, wrapping in local
2017/06/28 13:29:15 [INFO] backend/local: starting Plan operation
No configuration files found!

2017/06/28 13:29:15 [DEBUG] plugin: waiting for all plugin processes to complete...
Plan requires configuration to be present. Planning without a configuration
would mark everything for destruction, which is normally not what is desired.
If you would like to destroy everything, please run plan with the "-destroy"
flag or create a single empty configuration file. Otherwise, please create
a Terraform configuration file in the path being executed and try again.





$ ls terraform/test | grep tfstate
terraform.tfstate
terraform.tfstate.backup