Supreme Court Declines to Hear Case Regarding D.C.’s Lack of Voting Rights in Congress

The Supreme Court has declined to perceive a lawsuit from Washington, D.C., residents implicit their deficiency of voting rights successful Congress, affirming a little tribunal ruling that held that D.C. residents are not entitled to voting practice successful the House of Representatives.

“Residents of the District of Columbia are the lone big American citizens taxable to national income taxes who deficiency voting practice successful Congress, but for felons successful immoderate states,” the plaintiffs told the Supreme Court successful a little earlier this year.

The Supreme Court’s justices indicated that they’d based their ruling connected a Supreme Court determination from much than 2 decades agone that declared that Washington, D.C. residents bash not person a law close to a ballot successful Congress.

The Supreme Court’s enactment comes amid discussions astir making Washington, D.C. a state.

Washington, D.C. is location to much than 700,000 residents––that’s much than the states of Wyoming and Vermont. But D.C. lacks practice successful Congress; those who reason a statehood measurement judge it would lone beforehand the Democratic Party’s interests, guaranteeing it 2 seats connected Capitol Hill. Some besides accidental the determination would interruption the 23rd Amendment, which allows D.C. residents to ballot successful statesmanlike elections but gives them arsenic overmuch accidental arsenic the residents of the “least populous State.”

In April, the White House formally declared its enactment for a measurement that would assistance D.C. statehood.

“Establishing the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth arsenic the 51st authorities volition marque our Union stronger and much just,” the Office of Management and Budget said successful a connection of medication policy. “Washington, D.C. has a robust economy, a affluent culture, and a divers colonisation of Americans from each walks of beingness who are entitled to afloat and adjacent information successful our democracy.”

The White House called connected Congress “to supply for a swift and orderly modulation to statehood for the radical of Washington, D.C.”