Norton Thanks Pelosi and Hoyer for Declining to Join Republican House Leaders’ Amicus Brief Filed Today to Overturn Favorable D.C. Budget Autonomy Ruling

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today thanked Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the two Democratic leaders on the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives (BLAG) for again declining to join an amicus brief filed today in federal court that expresses the view of the House that the District of Columbia budget autonomy referendum is invalid. BLAG filed a similar brief in 2014, when the budget autonomy referendum—overwhelmingly approved by District voters in 2013—was initially challenged in court, and which Pelosi and Hoyer refused to sign at the time.

This most recent challenge to D.C.’s budget autonomy law was filed in federal court by a D.C. resident who is represented by a conservative legal group called Judicial Watch. This case is separate from the one that was recently decided in the D.C. Superior Court, which upheld the budget autonomy law after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated the federal district court’s decision to strike down the budget autonomy law, and remanded it to the District’s local Superior Court. Norton said that, in light of the Superior Court’s ruling, House Republican leaders should leave the budget autonomy law alone.

“Here they go again. The Republican House leaders filed a similar amicus brief in 2014 the last time the District’s budget autonomy law was challenged in court. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sent the case back where it belongs—to our local Superior Court,” Norton said. “The Superior Court ruled that the Home Rule Act permits the District of Columbia to seek budget autonomy and that the city did so with the 2013 referendum. That court therefore refused to interfere with the budget autonomy referendum and that is the law as it now stands. I will continue to defend D.C. budget autonomy from congressional interference.”

BLAG, which consists of the five top members of the House leadership—the Speaker, the majority and minority leaders, and the majority and minority whips—articulates the institutional position of the House in all of its litigation matters. As of now, the city has moved to have the case dismissed, but BLAG has asked the court to rule on the merits and find the budget autonomy referendum invalid.