House Democrats in Washington had no trouble passing a bill that would make Washington DC the 51st state, and the measure faces a far less certain future in the Senate. In the meanwhile, legal questions remain - is giving DC statehood by legislation Constitutional? Newell spoke to Zach Smith, a Legal Fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial studies at the Heritage Foundation to find out.
“Zach, this has been reviewed through a bipartisan lens many, many times over the last three to four decades,” Newell began. “And it seems as though everyone has reached the same conclusion that this is not a good idea. It would require Constitutional amendments and a lot of cleaning up that has to happen before we even go down this path.”
“Yeah, that's exactly right. Unfortunately, HR 51, the bill that passed the House earlier this week, essentially ignores those earlier Justice Department opinions from the Carter administration attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy,” Smith said. “When he was in charge of the Justice Department, which said that radically altering the size and status of the District of Columbia would require a Constitutional amendment. And so what we've seen with the approach of the advocates of HR, 51, is that they're unfortunately ignoring the very significant Constitutional issues surrounding trying to achieve DC statehood in this manner. Even if you think the District of Columbia should become a state, and I think there are very good reasons why it should not, we still have to confront the issue of whether this is the appropriate mechanism to pursue that goal. And it's not - because a Constitutional amendment is needed.”
“I guess we're not surprised by this tactic. We're always looking for the path of least resistance, where we are more interested in the what as opposed to the why in an outcome,” Newell said. “Damn the torpedoes, we will do anything that we can. But the problem is, and I think you summarize your testimony very well in quoting Sir Thomas Moore - if we cut down the Constitution, where will we turn when we need its protections? And I think that's a loaded question. In fact, we ought to start right there whenever we're contemplating doing what they're doing here.
“Unfortunately, what we're seeing with this issue and with other ones being discussed today is an attempt to shoe horn our preferred policy goals in, and make the Constitution fit what we're trying to do instead of make what we're trying to do fit the Constitution,” Smith said. “That's a very dangerous path to go down. And so with DC statehood in particular, it's passed the House of Representatives, it's over to the Senate now, likely to face an uphill battle. I'm hopeful cooler heads will prevail, but if for some reason it does make it out of the Senate, President Biden has pledged to to sign it when it comes to his desk. And so then we're really facing a worst case scenario where there are likely to be years of litigation, that go on after this. You’ll have every potential act of the new state being called into question. You’ll have every act passed by Congress called into question. And there are the 23rd amendment issues surrounding uh, DC statehood. The 23rd amendment gives electoral college votes to the District for president. If that issue is not resolved, you could even see a future presidential election be called into question. Very dangerous, very severe consequences could follow, which is why we need to have a full, fair, thorough discussion about this issue.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
