Norton Applauds New D.C. Voting Rights Lawsuit and Says D.C. Residents Ready to Fight for Equal Rights on All Fronts

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today delivered remarks at a press conference announcing a lawsuit filed by DC Appleseed and 11 District of Columbia residents against the United States seeking voting rights in the House and Senate.

In her prepared remarks, Norton said, "Nothing shows how strongly D.C. residents feel about full and equal voting rights than our engagement in multiple strategies—today's lawsuit, our pending D.C. statehood bill and the more than a dozen bills I have introduced, such as legislative autonomy, to round out and complete the Home Rule Act, that Congress should do right now."

Norton's full remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below.

"With record early voting already in progress, no Americans are more ready for change than D.C. residents, who pay the highest federal taxes per capita and have no voting representation in Congress. We are therefore enormously grateful to Walter Smith and DC Appleseed and to the law firm of Harris Wiltshire and Grannis for coming forward with new and particularly encouraging litigation to obtain D.C. voting rights in the House and Senate.

"At the heart of this lawsuit is the confidence D.C. residents have had for more than two centuries that the founders, who went to war on the slogan of no taxation without representation, never intended their own nation's capital to be an exception. This brilliant lawsuit raises new issues that one does not have to be a legal scholar to understand: Congress can give the District representation in the Senate and House, as it has done, for example, for Americans living overseas; that the 2015 decision holding by the U.S. Supreme Court that marriage is a fundamental right opens the way to the District's argument that the vote too is a fundamental right; and that court cases that have found gerrymandering violates the First Amendment freedom of association necessarily mean that total denial of the vote to D.C. residents also violates freedom of association.

"Nothing shows how strongly D.C. residents feel about full and equal voting rights than our engagement in multiple strategies— today's lawsuit, our pending D.C. statehood bill and the more than a dozen bills I have introduced, such as legislative autonomy, to round out and complete the Home Rule Act, that Congress should do right now. The day before the election is the right day to take fresh action with a seminal lawsuit to claim our congressional rights."