Norton is Certain the Voting Rights Bill Will Pass After Today's Hearing (1/27/09)

Norton is Certain the Voting Rights Bill Will Pass After Today's Hearing

January 27, 2009

Washington, D.C. - The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today said the Congresswoman is optimistic that the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, H.R. 157, will proceed quickly to the House Floor after compelling testimony today during the first hearing on the bill, held in the Judiciary subcommittee, including testimony from Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who, had earlier said he would schedule the vote within weeks on the House Floor. Norton, who noted Hoyer's continued strong resolve to move early, and his request to testify in support of her bill at the first hearing, expects support for her bill to prevail through the bill mark-up even though some opponents always seek to saddle the bill with dubious amendments, raising arguments of taxation without representation and retrocession.

Norton said the arguments on the grounds that the bill is unconstitutional were "countered by strong testimony from Georgetown Law Professor Viet Dinh, a former U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy in the Ashcroft Justice Department under President Bush (the office that advises the President and the Attorney General concerning constitutional matters), who "brilliantly showed how the courts had considered the District as a state whenever challenged." Professor Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor, Public Interest Law, George Washington University, offered equally strong views that the bill was unconstitutional, but Norton said that Turley, "failed to offer a principle that would distinguish a congressional bill for D.C. voting rights from the long pattern of treating D.C. as a state for purposes such as collecting federal income taxes by the Congress and the federal courts." Wade Henderson, President and CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which represents approximately 200 national organizations, spoke to the civil rights roots of the bill and offered a letter of support signed by 20 Constitutional experts. Yolanda O. Lee, a third generation Washingtonian who is an Iraq War combat veteran and a member of the D.C. National Guard, asked that Congress "change [her] status as an American citizen who pays taxes and serves in war and peace, but is entitled only to a non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives."

Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chair of the hearing in the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, entered into the record a letter from Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman, Jr., who wrote, "I have not extensively studied the constitutionality of the D.C. Voting Rights bill, but I am impressed and persuaded by the scholarship represented in this legislation. The people of Utah have expressed outrage over the loss of one Congressional seat for the last six years. I can't imagine what it must be like for American citizens to have no representation at all for more than 200 years. Passage of legislation giving a seat to D.C. and a fourth seat to Utah is a chance for you to do the right thing and I hope you don't miss that opportunity." Utah lost a seat in a census count.

Republicans have continually said they support voting rights, but at the hearing they focused on retrocession of the District of Columbia to Maryland. However, Congresswoman Norton said that this suggestion "raises even more serious constitutional questions about state sovereignty because it would force one jurisdiction onto another, not to mention raising questions about reapportionment and other similar constitutional issues." The chief opponent of her bill, Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), known for his strong opposition to voting rights, offered 33 amendments to kill the bill last year. This time, Norton said, he tried to "dress up his opposition with retrocession" in light of the strong majority in favor of voting rights, as Henderson showed by entering into the record a 2007 Washington Post poll that showed that 61 percent of Americans supported the D.C. House vote, with majority support from Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. Norton dismissed Gohmert's second proposal for D.C. - to pay no federal taxes - inasmuch as Norton had offered that same proposal when Republicans controlled the House and were reducing taxes, but they refused to act on the same approach that Gohmert now offers.