Statehood movement in the District of Columbia

The District of Columbia statehood movement is a political movement that advocates making the District of Columbia a U.S. state to provide the taxpayers of the District of Columbia with voting representation in the Congress and full control over local affairs.

This article is about the movement for statehood of the District of Columbia. For the political party, see D.C. Statehood Green Party.
"New Columbia" redirects here. For other uses, see New Columbia (disambiguation).

Official flag of Washington, D.C.
A protest variant of the flag, from 2002

The District of Columbia is currently a federal district under the direct jurisdiction of the United States Congress. It is unique from all other jurisdictions in that it contains only one city - the capital city of Washington. For most of the modern (1980–present) statehood movement, the new state's name would have been "New Columbia", although the Washington, D.C. Admission Act of 2020 refers to the proposed state as the "State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth".[1][2]

Statehood for the District may be achieved by an act of Congress, under the power granted to Congress by the United States Constitution to admit new states to the Union (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1).

If the District of Columbia were to become a state – based on 2018 figures – it would rank 49th by population (ahead of Vermont and Wyoming), 51st by area, 1st by GDP per capita, 1st by median household income, and 34th by total GDP.

History
The U.S. Army Institute of Heraldry has designed this 51-star version of the national flag for use in the event that a 51st state is admitted into the Union.

District Clause of the Constitution

In the late 18th century, a number of individuals believed that Congress needed control over the national capital. This belief resulted in the creation of a national capital, separate from any state, by the Constitution's District Clause.[3]

The "District Clause" in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the United States Constitution states:

[The Congress shall have Power] To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States.

In support of the creation of the District of Columbia, Madison wrote in Federalist 43 that the residents of the new federal district "will have had their voice in the election of the government which is to exercise authority over them". Madison did not elaborate as to how this would be but even with a then unidentified parcel suggested that the principles of self-government would not be absent in the capital of the Republic. Despite Madison's statement, residents of the District of Columbia do not have voting representation in Congress.

Early discussions of voting rights

In 1788, the land on which the District is formed was ceded by Maryland. In 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act placing the District on the Potomac River between the Anacostia and Connogochegue with the exact location chosen by President George Washington. His selection was announced on January 24, 1791, and the Residence Act was amended to include land that Virginia had ceded in 1790. That land was returned to Virginia in 1847. The Congress did not officially move to the new federal capital until the first Monday in December 1800. During that time, the District was governed by a combination of a federally appointed Board of Commissioners, the state legislatures and locally elected governments.[4]

Within a year of moving to the District, Congress passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 and incorporated the new federal District under its sole authority as permitted by the District Clause. Since the District of Columbia was no longer part of any state, the District's residents lost voting representation in Congress and the Electoral College as well as a voice in Constitutional Amendments and the right to home rule, facts that did not go without protest.[5] In January 1801, a meeting of District citizens was held which resulted in a statement to Congress commenting that as a result of the impending Organic Act "we shall be completely disfranchised in respect to the national government, while we retain no security for participating in the formation of even the most minute local regulations by which we are to be affected. We shall be reduced to that deprecated condition of which we pathetically complained in our charges against Great Britain, of being taxed without representation."[4]

Talk of suffrage for the District of Columbia began almost immediately, though it mostly focused on a constitutional amendments and retrocession, not statehood. In 1801, Augustus Woodward writing under the name Epaminondes, wrote a series of newspaper articles in the National Intelligencer proposing a constitutional amendment that would read "The Territory of Columbia shall be entitled to one Senator in the Senate of the United States; and to a number of members in the House of Representatives proportionate to its population."[6] Since then more than 150 constitutional amendments and bills have been introduced to provide representation to the District of Columbia, resulting in congressional hearings on more than twenty occasions, with the first of those hearings in 1803.[7] At that time, resolutions were introduced by Congress to retrocede most of District of Columbia to Maryland. Citizens fearful that the seat of government be moved asked that D.C. be given a territorial government and an amendment to the Constitution for equal rights. But James Holland of North Carolina argued that creating a territorial government would leave citizens dissatisfied. He said, "the next step will be a request to be admitted as a member of the Union, and, if you pursue the practice relative to territories, you must, so soon as their numbers will authorize it, admit them into the Union."[8]

Late 19th and early 20th century

The first proposal for congressional representation to get serious consideration came in 1888, but it would not be until 1921 that congressional hearings would be held on the subject. Those hearings resulted in the first bill, introduced by Sen. Wesley Livsey Jones (R-WA), to be reported out of committee that would have addressed District representation. The bill would have enabled – though not required – Congress to treat residents of D.C. as though they were citizens of a state.

Civil rights era and the 23rd Amendment, 1950s–1970s

Congressional members continued to propose amendments to address the District's lack of representation, with efforts picking up as part of the Civil rights movement in the late 1950s. This eventually resulted in successful passage of the Twenty-third Amendment in 1961, which granted the District votes in the Electoral College in proportion to their size as if they were a state, but no more than the least populous state. This right has been exercised by D.C. citizens since the presidential election of 1964.

With District citizens still denied full suffrage, members continued to propose bills to address congressional representation. Such bills made it out of committee in 1967 and 1972, for a House floor for a vote in 1976 and in 1978 resulted in the formal proposal of the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment. But that amendment expired in 1985, 22 ratifications short of the needed 38.

1980s–2015
D.C. Statehood Now! flag at Inauguration 2013

Before the failure of the D.C. Voting Rights Amendment, but when passage seemed unlikely, District voters finally began to pursue statehood. In 1980, District voters approved the call of a constitutional convention to draft a proposed state constitution,[9] just as U.S. territories had done prior to their admission as states. The convention was held in February through April 1982.[10] The proposed constitution was ratified by District voters in 1982 for a new state to be called "New Columbia".[11] In 1987, another state constitution[12] was drafted, which again referred to the proposed state as New Columbia. Since the 98th Congress, more than a dozen statehood bills have been introduced, with two bills being reported out of the committee of jurisdictions.[13] The second of these bills made it to the House floor in November 1993, for the only floor debate and vote on D.C. statehood. It was defeated in the House of Representatives by a vote of 277 to 153.

Pursuant to the 1980 proposed state constitution, the District still selects members of a shadow congressional delegation, consisting of two shadow Senators and a shadow Representative, to lobby the Congress to grant statehood. These positions are not officially recognized by the Congress. Additionally, until May 2008, the Congress prohibited the District from spending any funds on lobbying for voting representation or statehood.[14]

Since the 1993 vote, bills to grant statehood to the District have been introduced in Congress each year but have not been brought to a vote.[15] Following a 2012 statehood referendum in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, political commentators endorsed the idea of admitting both the District and Puerto Rico into the Union.[16][17]

In July 2014, President Barack Obama became the second sitting president, after Bill Clinton in 1993, to endorse statehood for the District of Columbia. Asked about his opinion on statehood in a town-hall event, he said "I’m in D.C., so I’m for it ... Folks in D.C. pay taxes like everybody else ... They contribute to the overall well-being of the country like everybody else. They should be represented like everybody else. And it's not as if Washington, D.C., is not big enough compared to other states. There has been a long movement to get D.C. statehood and I've been for it for quite some time. The politics of it end up being difficult to get it through Congress, but I think it’s absolutely the right thing to do."[18][19] D.C. residents now pay more in taxes than 22 states.[20]

For more than 20 years following the 1993 floor vote, there were no congressional hearings on D.C. statehood. But on September 15, 2014, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs held a hearing on bill S. 132, which would have created a new state out of the current District of Columbia, similar to the 1993 bill.[21]

On December 4, 2015, the District of Columbia was granted membership in the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, an advocacy group for people groups and territories which do not receive full representation in the government of the state in which they reside.[22]

2016 statehood referendum
District of Columbia statehood referendum, 2016
November 8, 2016 (2016-11-08)
LocationDistrict of Columbia
Voting systemsimple majority
Shall the voters of the District of Columbia advise the Council to approve or reject this proposal?
Approve
 
 85.83%
Reject
 
 14.17%
Main article: District of Columbia statehood referendum, 2016

On April 15, 2016, District Mayor Muriel Bowser called for a districtwide vote on whether the nation's capital should become the 51st state.[23] This was followed by the release of a proposed state constitution.[24] This constitution would make the Mayor of the District of Columbia the governor of the proposed state, while the members of the District Council would make up the proposed House of Delegates. While the name "New Columbia" has long been associated with the movement, community members thought other names, such as Potomac or Douglass, were more appropriate for the area.[25]

On November 8, 2016, the voters of the District of Columbia voted overwhelmingly in favor of statehood, with 86% of voters voting to advise approving the proposal.[26] Although the proposed state name on the ballot sent to voters appeared as "State of New Columbia", the resolution passed by the D.C. District Council passed in October 2016, weeks before the election, changed the name to "State of Washington, D.C.", in which "D.C." stands for "Douglass Commonwealth", a reference to African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who lived in Washington, D.C. from 1877 to 1895.[27]

H.R. 51
Main article: DC Admission Act

In March 2017, the District's congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced the Washington, D.C. Admission Act to propose D.C. statehood in the U.S. House of Representatives.[28] In May 2017, the Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate.[29]

In February 2019, the House Democratic leadership put its support behind legislation to grant D.C. statehood.[30] H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2019, included a nonbinding expression of support, passed 234 to 193 in March 2019 on a party-line vote, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.[31]

The George Floyd protests in June 2020 brought attention to situations of racial injustice, and President Trump's controversial use of the D.C. National Guard (among other forces) to clear protesters from near the White House angered the city government,[32] which, unlike the states in the United States, does not directly control its National Guard. On June 26, 2020, the House of Representatives passed the "Washington, D.C. Admission Act" 232–180 largely along party lines; Collin Peterson and Justin Amash were the only Democrat and Libertarian, respectively, to vote no.[33] It died in the Republican-controlled Senate at the end of the 116th Congress.[34][35] On January 4, 2021, Delegate Norton reintroduced H.R. 51 early in the 117th Congress with a record 202 co-sponsors.[36][37]

The Washington, D.C. Admission Act would create the state of "Washington, Douglass Commonwealth" (named after Frederick Douglass). As a state, the Douglass Commonwealth would receive two Senators and representation in the House of Representatives based on population (a single representative would be apportioned for the foreseeable future).[32] The admission act would carve out a smaller federal district, dubbed "the Capitol"; this would consist of the White House, U.S. Capitol, other federal buildings, the National Mall, and its monuments.[32][31] The bill included a section on repealing the 23rd Amendment, which grants the district three electoral votes in presidential elections. The bill also repeals Section 21, Title 3 of the US Code, dealing with presidential elections, which for the purposes of the election of the President and Vice President, "State" includes the District of Columbia. Were the 23rd Amendment not to be repealed, the small district remaining as the seat of government would retain three Electoral College votes, and Congress would need to legislate a means of appointing electors, as the amendment requires, with one possibility being awarding them to the winner of the popular vote.[38]

S. 51

On January 26, 2021, Tom Carper of Delaware introduced a similar bill, S.51, "A bill to provide for the admission of the State of Washington, D.C. into the Union" into the United States Senate with a record 38 co-sponsors.[39][40] On February 2, 2021, a 39th co-sponsor signed on.

Arguments for

Right to govern

Advocates of statehood and voting representation for the District of Columbia argue that as citizens living in the United States, the District's estimated 706,000 residents[41] (more than Wyoming and Vermont) should have the same right to determine how they are governed as citizens of a state. At least as early as 1776, George Mason wrote in the Virginia Declaration of Rights:

VI. That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in assembly, ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage, and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent, or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented, for the public good.

VII. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights, and ought not to be exercised.[42]

Voting representation

The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act allows U.S. citizens to vote absentee for their home state's Congressional representatives from anywhere else in the world. If a U.S. citizen were to move to the District, however, that person would lose the ability to vote for a member of the Congress. Stated differently, the residents of the District of Columbia, despite paying federal taxes, do not have any voting representation in Congress.

Tax arguments

Unlike residents of U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico or Guam, which also have non-voting delegates, citizens of the District of Columbia are subject to all U.S. federal taxes.[43] In the financial year 2007, D.C. residents and businesses paid $20.4 billion in federal taxes; more than the taxes collected from 19 states and the highest federal taxes per capita.[44] This situation has given rise to the use of the phrase "End Taxation Without Representation" by those in favor of granting D.C. voting representation in the Congress. The slogan currently appears on the city's vehicle license plates.

Human rights

Since 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Committee report has cited the United States for denying D.C. residents voting rights in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty the United States ratified in 1992.[45]

In 2015, D.C. became a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.[46]

2021 storming of the United States Capitol

Proponents have argued that DC Statehood may have resulted in a more swift response to the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol since state governors have the power to mobilize their National Guard units.[47]

Arguments against

Prior to the District's founding, James Madison argued in Federalist No. 43 that the national capital needed to be distinct from the states in order to provide for its own maintenance and safety. He wrote, "but a dependence of the members of the general government on the State comprehending the seat of the government, for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonorable to the government and dissatisfactory to the other members of the Confederacy."[48] The current proposed statehood movements address (and resolve) this concern by reserving an independent enclave for the federal government buildings.[49] Specifically, the statehood legislation supported by the District government carves out an enclave within the proposed state, encompassing the White House, Capitol Building, Supreme Court Building, and other major federal offices, to act as the new federal district, known as "The Capital".[49]

US flag with 51 stars.

Some have expressed concern over adding a star to the official flag. However, the U.S. Army Institute of Heraldry has designed the adjacent 51-star version of the national flag for use in the event that a 51st state is admitted into the Union.

Alternative proposals to statehood

Alternative proposals to statehood have been proposed to grant the District varying degrees of greater political autonomy and voting representation in the Congress. Most proposals generally involve either treating the District of Columbia more like a state or allowing Maryland to take back the land it donated to form the District.

If both Congress and the Maryland General Assembly agreed, jurisdiction over the District of Columbia could be returned to Maryland or given to Virginia if the state legislature of Virginia agreed, possibly excluding a small tract of land immediately surrounding the United States Capitol, the White House and the Supreme Court building. This process is known as retrocession.[50] If the District were returned to Maryland or given to Virginia, citizens in D.C. would gain voting representation in the Congress as residents of Maryland or Virginia.[51][52] Retrocession could also alter the idea of a separate national capital as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.[53] However, retrocession is unpopular among D.C. residents.[54]

A proposal related to retrocession was the "District of Columbia Voting Rights Restoration Act of 2004" (H.R. 3709), which would have treated the residents of the District as residents of Maryland for the purposes of congressional representation. Maryland's congressional delegation would then be apportioned accordingly to include the population of the District.[55] Those in favor of such a plan argue that the Congress already has the necessary authority to pass such legislation without the constitutional concerns of other proposed remedies. From the foundation of the District in 1790 until the passage of the Organic Act of 1801, citizens living in D.C. continued to vote for members of Congress in Maryland or Virginia; legal scholars therefore propose that the Congress has the power to restore those voting rights while maintaining the integrity of the federal district.[56] However, the proposed legislation never made it out of committee and would not grant the District any additional authority over its local affairs.[55]

Several bills have been introduced in Congress to grant the District of Columbia voting representation in one or both houses of Congress. The primary issue with all legislative proposals is whether the Congress has the constitutional authority to grant the District voting representation. Members of Congress in support of the bills claim that constitutional concerns should not prohibit the legislation's passage, but rather should be left to the courts.[57] A secondary criticism of a legislative remedy is that any law granting representation to the District could be undone in the future. Additionally, recent legislative proposals deal with granting representation in the House of Representatives only, which would still leave the issue of Senate representation for District residents unresolved.[58] Since the D.C. Voting Rights Amendment was proposed in 1978, no bill granting the District voting representation has successfully passed both houses of Congress, though the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 did pass in the Senate in 2009. If a bill were to pass, the law would not grant the District any additional authority over its local affairs.

Political support

Civil rights, religious, and labor organizations

Religious groups supporting D.C. statehood include the American Jewish Committee, the Episcopal Church,[59] the Union for Reform Judaism, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, the Catholic Social Justice Lobby,[60] and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

According to the Commission for Statehood, an office of the Government of the District of Columbia, D.C. statehood is supported by the American Federation of Teachers, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP, National Treasury Employees Union, National Urban League, and SEIU.[61]

Democrats
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking in support of D.C. statehood in 2020.

As well as Democratic former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democratic 2016 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders – a co-sponsor of the 2015 New Columbia Admission Act – and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley support D.C statehood.[62] President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also support D.C. statehood.[63]

From the 1993 statehood failure through the failure of the 2009 House Voting Rights Act, neither statehood nor retrocession was a legislative priority by either party.[64][65] In 2014, Maryland's senators, both Democrats, co-sponsored a D.C. statehood bill,[64][65] then in May 2017, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate which led to the first hearings on the subject in years.[29] In February 2019, the House Democratic leadership put its support behind legislation to grant D.C. statehood.[30] Bill H.R. 1, which included a nonbinding expression of support, passed 234 to 193 in March 2019.[31]

Republicans

The local D.C. Republican Party has been a long-standing supporter of voting rights for the District of Columbia.[66]

Libertarians
Main article: Libertarian Party of the District of Columbia

The Libertarian Party of the District of Columbia strongly supports D.C. becoming a state.[67]

Greens
Main article: D.C. Statehood Green Party

The cause of D.C. statehood, is and always has been, a priority for D.C. Statehood Green Party.[68]

License plates
Main article: Vehicle registration plates of the District of Columbia

In November 2000, the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles began issuing license plates bearing the slogan "Taxation without representation".[69] President Bill Clinton had these plates placed on the presidential limousines shortly before the end of his second term. However, President George W. Bush, in one of his first official acts as president, had the plates removed.[70] The usage of "taxation without representation" plates was restored by President Barack Obama shortly before his second-term inauguration.[71] President Donald Trump continued to use the plates, though he stated he had "no position" regarding statehood or representation for the District.[72] However, in an interview in 2020, Trump said D.C. statehood would "never happen."[73]

Polling

In polling that finished fielding September 1, 2020, it was found that about 43 percent of voters now favor DC statehood, with 34 percent opposed and 23 percent having no opinion.[74]

See also

References
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  2. Norton, Eleanor Holmes (January 3, 2019). "H.R.51 – 116th Congress (2019–2020): Washington, D.C. Admission Act". United States Congress. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  3. District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007: Hearing Notes. DIANE publishing. March 14, 2007. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-4223-2085-3.
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