{"id":34348,"date":"2020-07-27T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T17:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/civil-liberties\/auto-draft"},"modified":"2023-02-27T17:15:02","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T22:15:02","slug":"d-c-statehood-is-a-racial-justice-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/voting-rights\/d-c-statehood-is-a-racial-justice-issue","title":{"rendered":"D.C. Statehood is a Racial Justice Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"metadata":[],"class_list":["post-34348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":{"header_layout":"standard","color_scheme":false,"header_image":34393,"mobile_header_image":null,"description":"The legal and moral argument for D.C. statehood.","authors":[32180],"components":[{"acf_fc_layout":"text","text":{"text":"

As the movement for D.C. statehood gains undeniable momentum, anxious cries from its detractors are reaching a fever pitch. Following the House of Representatives\u2019 recent approval of the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, H.R. 51, which would finally grant statehood and full voting representation in Congress to over 700,000 people living in our nation\u2019s capital, critics emerged in the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, and elsewhere to wring their hands over the alleged \u201cpartisan advantage<\/a>\u201d that statehood would bring. Further, they argued, D.C. statehood can only spring from a constitutional amendment.

This focus on the potential partisan leaning of the new state\u2019s federal delegation misses the point: D.C. statehood would correct an overt act of racial voter suppression with roots in the Reconstruction era. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson vetoed a bill granting adult citizens of the District \u2014 including Black men \u2014 the right to vote. Congress overrode the veto, granting significant political influence to Black Washingtonians. But just as Black voters started to exercise their power, Congress replaced D.C.\u2019s territorial government with three presidentially appointed commissioners.

The goal of that move was obvious: disenfranchising an increasingly politically active Black community. As Sen. John Tyler Morgan of Alabama explained in 1890, after \u201cthe negroes came into this district,\u201d it became necessary to \u201cdeny the right of suffrage entirely to every human being.\u201d As he put it more simply, and shamefully: It was necessary to \u201cburn down the barn to get rid of the rats.\u201d 

In one cautionary opinion piece, attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey raise some policy concerns against the House bill. But their stated arguments are not constitutional barriers. Relying on Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy\u2019s 1964 memo opposing D.C. statehood, the authors conclude that \u201cabolishing the permanent seat of the federal government would be a profound change \u2014 the sort that can be accomplished only with a national consensus implemented through a constitutional amendment.\u201d But H.R. 51 does not abolish the national capital \u2014 it only shrinks it, making a new state out of most of the resized District\u2019s surrounding areas.

Congress can do this, because the Framers knew how to say what they meant. They gave Congress authority to \u201cexercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever\u201d over the District, stating only that it could not be larger than ten square miles. That sweeping authority includes the power to shrink the District to less than its current size. As Viet Dinh, Assistant Attorney General under President Bush, explained to Congress in 2014, Kennedy\u2019s policy concern \u201cis just that: a policy concern,\u201d and would not override a constitutional act of Congress.

There\u2019s no better proof that the Framers meant to give Congress the power to shrink the District\u2019s boundaries than the fact that it immediately did so after the District was first established. Congress gave back most of Arlington and Alexandria to Virginia in 1846. But the first Congress also changed the District\u2019s configuration in 1791, less than four years after the Constitutional Convention. This bolsters the constitutionality of the House bill, because, as the Supreme Court said in Marsh v. Chambers <\/em>(1983), acts of the first Congress offer \u201ccontemporaneous and weighty evidence\u201d of the Framers\u2019 intent. And when the court addressed the 1846 retrocession in Phillips v. Payne<\/em> (1875), it strongly hinted that Congress had vast authority over the District\u2019s boundaries, saying the case involved \u201caction of the political departments\u201d that \u201cbound\u201d the courts.

Nor does the House bill violate the Twenty-Third Amendment, which gives the District of Columbia three votes in the Electoral College. That amendment would lead to a curious result: It would give the few residents of the smaller, reshaped national capital outsized influence in presidential elections. But there\u2019s no constitutional conflict between the House bill and the Twenty-Third Amendment. As Viet Dinh explained, \u201cthe Constitution is not violated anytime the factual assumptions underlying a provision change.\u201d Indeed, the Amendment gives the current District three \u2014 and only three \u2014 Electoral College votes even if its population somehow quadrupled tomorrow, and the bill provides an expedited process for removing those three electors. And importantly, as noted by Rivkin and Casey, the House-passed bill establishes expedited procedures for the House and Senate to repeal the Twenty-Third Amendment.

Critics continue to ignore the essential argument in favor of statehood: ending the continued disenfranchisement of a non-minority Black jurisdiction that has left hundreds of thousands of Americans without representation in Congress. They also overlook<\/a> the fact that in 2016, almost 80 percent of D.C. voters supported<\/a> statehood in a referendum.

Admitting a new state will always have political implications. That\u2019s why the Framers fully left the matter to Congress\u2019s discretion. Rivkin and Casey are right that D.C. statehood would be a \u201cprofound change,\u201d \u2014  a profound, constitutionally viable change \u2014 that would bring our country one step forward to an inclusive democracy. <\/p>"}}],"featured_cases_section":{"enable_featured_cases":false,"title":"Featured Cases","description":"","featured_cases":null},"action":148399,"issues":[46653,46799],"related_content_cases":null,"related_content_documents":null,"related_content_publications":null,"related_affiliates":null,"content_layout":"","theme":"light","drupal_nid":""},"yoast_head":"\nD.C. 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