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Norton Says Holder Has Long Supported D.C.’s Rights in His Professional and Personal Capacities

September 26, 2014

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today said she deeply appreciated United States Attorney General Eric Holder's impassioned remarks about District of Columbia voting rights this morning at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Leadership Conference, where he said, "It is long past time for every citizen to be afforded his or her full responsibilities and full rights." In 2009, his first year as Attorney General, Holder was skeptical about the Justice Department opinion arguing against the constitutionality of a pending bill to give the District a vote in the House of Representatives, the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, and sought a second opinion from the office of the U.S. Solicitor General, the only office authorized to argue federal government matters before the United States Supreme Court. The opinion of the Solicitor General found that the Department could defend the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, should it be challenged in the courts. This second opinion was recently reinforced in a different, but related, opinion of the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service that said statehood itself is likely constitutional.

Norton has been in the minority for most of her service in the Congress. However, she was able to get the D.C. Voting Rights Act bill passed in the House in 2007, partnering with former Representative Thomas Davis (R-VA), and in the Senate in 2009, which would have given D.C. a voting House member, had it not been derailed by an amendment. Her top goal has always been statehood.

"I am not surprised that the Attorney General would state a view he has long held as a D.C. resident, quite apart from the legal issue that confronted him as Attorney General, that D.C. residents should have the vote in Congress as other citizens do," Norton said. "Eric Holder will be remembered for his years of legal path-breaking work at the Justice Department – from holding Wall Street accountable after the Great Recession to criminal justice reform. It stands to reason that an Attorney General who will be remembered as a civil rights Attorney General would have eyed with skepticism the view that Congress, which has full control over the District under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, could not use that authority to grant D.C. the vote in Congress. What the Attorney General said today about D.C.'s vote matches the legal view of the Solicitor General with his personal view as a resident of this city."

When Norton came to Congress in 1991, her first bill was the New Columbia Admission Act. She got the only House vote on statehood in 1993. Almost two-thirds of the Democrats voted for the bill and one Republican voted for it, giving the bill a strong start, but the Democrats lost the majority in the next Congress.

Earlier this month, Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, held what appeared to be the first-ever Senate hearing on D.C. statehood.