District of Columbia Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act - 2/12/2007

Washington, DC-The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released the following statement in response to inquiries on the constitutionality of H.R. 328, the District of Columbia Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2007.

We are not concerned about the constitutionality of H.R. 328. No similar case has ever been considered by any court, although the Tidewater case does create a favorable precedent. An unprecedented bill always raises constitutional issues, and we have always indicated that, not surprisingly, constitutional views on a novel bill like H.R. 328 are divided. However following extensive hearings before two committees in the House of Representatives that heard both sides of all the constitutional issues, we believe that the weight of constitutional opinion is with the District and H.R. 328. Two well known conservative constitutional scholars, former D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Kenneth Starr and former Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy under Attorney General Ashcroft Professor Viet Dinh, have extensively analyzed the D.C. vote bill and have offered detailed testimony that H.R. 328 is constitutional. Professor Dinh's 23 page testimony, finds, "We conclude that Congress has ample constitutional authority to enact the District of Columbia Fairness in Representation Act. In few, if any, other areas does the Constitution grant any broader authority to Congress to legislate." Tidewater, the major case on which both sides rely, was closely analyzed by Kenneth Starr. He concluded that "The Tidewater holding confirms what is now the law: the Constitution's use of the term ‘State' in Article III cannot mean ‘and not of the District of Columbia.' Identical logic supports legislation to enfranchise the District's voters: the use of the word ‘State' in Article I cannot bar Congress from exercising its plenary authority to extend the franchise to the District's residents."