On August 19th, MAP and the Millennial Action Staff Association (MASA) convened a panel event on the topic of D.C Statehood in conversation with William Roberts, a Managing Director on Democracy at Center for American Progress (CAP) and Zack Smith, a Legal Fellow at Heritage Foundation. With 72% of attendees marking themselves as at least somewhat passionate about D.C. Statehood and nearly 2/3rds of attendees living in the DMV area for at least 3 years, the panelists had a highly interested and engaged audience.
Mr. Roberts of CAP began the conversation, framing his argument for D.C. statehood around the injustice of disenfranchising current D.C. residents and the context in which their enfranchisement has been historically denied. The District of Columbia is currently home to over than 700,000 voters - a greater number than Wyoming or Vermont - who pay more taxes than 22 states and more taxes per capita than any other state; Mr. Roberts argued this is “taxation without representation.” The citizens of D.C. have spoken out forcefully and repeatedly in favor of statehood, including drafting state constitutions and voting in favor of becoming a state in the District of Columbia statehood referendum of 2016.
Furthermore, this arrangement had detrimental effects on the District’s residents, as Congress has superseded laws approved by the Council of the District of Columbia and administered the District less than half the amount of funding in the CARES Act as was afforded any state. Underlying the current arrangement, was a legacy of racial discrimination, Mr. Roberts asserted. “For a long time, Congress didn’t believe territories were worthy of statehood until they were majority white,” he said. D.C. has a majority non-white population today, and Mr. Roberts hears echoes of old prejudices when law makers describe the District as not being “well-rounded” today.
In contrast, Mr. Smith made a two-step legal argument: (1) the District of Columbia should not be a state, and (2) H.R.51 is not the appropriate way to establish statehood. Mr. Smith grounded his argument in many of the U.S. founding documents. He highlighted James Madison’s argument in Federalist 43 which states that the federal seat of government should be independent and pointing to the Constitution referring to the seat of federal government in a separate section from where it addresses state government.
Mr. Smith also asserted that making the District a state would involve risking the federal government to the ruling decisions of the new state’s legislature. He drew attention to the time under the Articles of Confederation when the governor of Pennsylvania declined to provide militia to protect the Confederation Congress from dissatisfied soldiers, inducing national Congress members to flee the state. Furthermore, Mr. Smith argued, even if one is to grant the idea that the District of Columbia should be made a state, this could be legitimately enacted only under a Constitutional amendment rather than legislation for the reasons cited above.
After their opening arguments, the panelists addressed audience questions. Speaking to the question of retrocession—returning some or all of the District of Columbia to the neighboring states of Virginia or Maryland—Mr. Roberts and Mr. Smith were in agreement that Maryland's support for such a move remains uncertain. However, Mr. Roberts noted that large parts of the District (Alexandria and Arlington Counties) had been retrocessed to Virginia in the 1800s. An audience member asked the panelists if they had any explanation for why more than 60% of Americans opposed statehood for D.C. in a July 2019 Gallup poll.
While Mr. Smith pointed to that number as evidence that Americans did not have the political appetite for a constitutional amendment on the issue, Mr. Roberts disagreed with Mr. Smith’s interpretation of the constitution and offered hope that voters’ opinions would change if they began to see the District as a city where many people live and not merely as a political entity. Mr. Roberts closed this portion of the debate by stating that the District of Columbia is the only capital in the democratic world that is not enfranchised.
After questions and answers, both panelists thanked the other for participating in the conversation and the audience for attending. They both expressed openness to continuing to engage with staffers on the topic and shared pieces on the topic.