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Norton to Thank Carper on House Floor for Supporting D.C. Statehood, This Evening

September 18, 2014

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will speak on the House floor around 6:00 p.m. tonight, after last votes, to thank Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), chairman of the Senate committee with jurisdiction over District of Columbia matters, for holding the first-ever Senate hearing on D.C. statehood and the first congressional hearing on D.C. statehood in more than two decades earlier this week. Norton's floor speech can be viewed live on C-SPAN or on www.cspan.org/live.

"Senator Carper is well known for his principled approach to issues," Norton said. "He has simultaneously opened an important national conversation and reinvigorated the local and national movement for D.C. statehood."

Today, Norton also announced that the Congressional Research Service and a leading Republican constitutional scholar and practitioner, Viet Dinh, have concluded that a challenge to the constitutionality of the D.C. statehood bill may well be outside the courts' purview, and that, in any case, there is likely a constitutional basis for the bill. On Monday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing before an overflow D.C. crowd on the D.C. statehood bill, the New Columbia Admission Act (H.R. 292/S. 132), sponsored by Norton and Carper.