District of Columbia statehood movement

It is currently debated whether the District of Columbia could be made a state by an act of Congress or whether it would require a constitutional amendment.

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.

"[12] Talk of suffrage for the District of Columbia began almost immediately, though it mostly focused on constitutional amendments and retrocession, not statehood.

In 1801, Augustus Woodward, writing under the name Epaminondas, 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.

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.

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.

With District citizens still denied full suffrage, members continued to propose bills to address congressional representation.

Before the D.C. Voting Rights Amendment failed, but when passage seemed unlikely, District voters finally began to pursue statehood.

In 1980, former Paulist priest and founder of the Community for Creative Non-Violence, J. Edward Guinan, put statehood on the ballot as an initiative.

While "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.

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.

[41] 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,[42] which, unlike the states in the United States, does not directly control its National Guard.

Admission Act" 232–180 largely along party lines; Collin Peterson and Justin Amash were the only Democrat and Libertarian, respectively, to vote no.

[42][41] The bill included a section creating faster procedures for repealing the Twenty-third Amendment, which grants the district three electoral votes in presidential elections.

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.

[60] Boston Globe commentator Abdallah Fayyad called anti-statehood arguments "racist", targeting the district's high African-American population.

A report by the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI) details how the system of taxation without full representation for the district's residents disproportionately affects people of color and women.

[62] 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.

In November 2000, the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles began issuing license plates bearing the slogan "Taxation without representation".

Admission Act, the statehood legislation supported by the district government since 2017, carves out an enclave within the proposed state known as "The Capital" to act as the new federal district; this Capital would encompass the White House, Capitol Building, Supreme Court Building, and other major federal offices.

Admission Act would not affect the Twenty-third Amendment to the Constitution, which requires that the U.S. capital "shall appoint" at least three members of the Electoral College even though it is not a state.

Admission Act attempts to address this issue by repealing the congressionally established laws that control how the District of Columbia chooses its Electoral College members, but the Congressional Research Service has concluded that even with this provision, courts would likely find that the 23rd Amendment still grants three electoral votes to the smaller Capital.

In a process known as retrocession, jurisdiction over the District of Columbia could be returned to Maryland or given to Virginia, possibly excluding a small tract of land immediately surrounding the United States Capitol, the White House and the Supreme Court building.

[78][better source needed] In addition, under any retrocession proposals, the exclusion of small tracts of land as a rump federal district would give the minimal number of people who live on those lands (possibly exclusively those living at the White House) three electoral votes in each U.S. presidential election, were the 23rd Amendment not to be repealed.

Members of Congress in support of the bills claim that constitutional concerns should not prohibit the legislation's passage but should be left to the courts.

[85] On June 22, 2021, statehood was endorsed by over 300 religious leaders, including James Winkler, head of the National Council of Churches.

[87] A July 22, 2021 letter to President Biden calling for support of voting rights and DC statehood prepared by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights was signed by 150 organizations including the Children's Defense Fund, Common Cause, the National Association of Social Workers, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Organization for Women, and the Communications Workers of America.

[88] In March 2021, the Federal City Council, a consortium of Washington business and civic leaders that promotes economic development in the District of Columbia, launched a research organization, Statehood Research DC, to provide the historical, economic, and legal details of making the District of Columbia a state.

[92] The D.C. Republican Party platform says "The District of Columbia must either become a state or its residents must be exempt from federal income taxes.

[104][105][106] The D.C. Republican Party platform says, "The District of Columbia must either become a state or its residents must be exempt from federal income taxes.