The Constitutionality of Awarding the Delegate for the District of Columbia a Vote in the House of Representatives or the Committee of the Whole

Publication Date: January 2007

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Government

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Abstract:

Two proposals have been made in the 110th Congress regarding granting the Delegate of the District of Columbia voting rights in the House. On January 9, 2007, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia introduced H.R. 328, the District of Columbia Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2007. On January 19, Representative Hoyer introduced H.Res. 78, which proposed House Rule changes allowing the District of Columbia delegate (in addition to the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico and the delegates from American Samoa, Guam, and the Virgin Islands) to vote in the Committee of the Whole, subject to a revote in the full House if such votes proved decisive. H.R. 328 has not yet been considered; H.Res. 78 was approved by the House on January 24, 2007, by a vote of 226-91.

These two approaches appear to raise separate, but related, constitutional issues. As to H.R. 328, it is difficult to identify either constitutional text or existing case law that would directly support the allocation by statute of the power to vote in the full House to the District of Columbia Delegate. Further, that case law that does exist would seem to indicate that not only is the District of Columbia not a "state" for purposes of representation, but that congressional power over the District of Columbia does not represent a sufficient power to grant congressional representation.

In particular, at least six of the Justices who participated in what appears to be the most relevant Supreme Court case on this issue, National Mutual Insurance Co. of the District of Columbia v. Tidewater Transfer Co., authored opinions rejecting the proposition that Congress's power under the District Clause was sufficient to effectuate structural changes to the federal government. Further, the remaining three judges, who found that the Congress could grant diversity jurisdiction to District of Columbia citizens despite the lack of such jurisdiction in Article III, specifically limited their opinion to instances where the legislation in question did not involve the extension of fundamental rights. To the extent that the representation in Congress would be seen as such a right, all nine Justices in Tidewater Transfer Co. would arguably have found the instant proposal to be unconstitutional.

H.Res. 78, on the other hand, is similar to amendments to the House Rules that were adopted during the 103rd Congress. These rule changes survived judicial scrutiny at both the District Court and the Court of Appeals level. It would appear, however, that these amendments were upheld primarily because of the provision calling for a revote by the full House when the vote of the delegates was decisive in the Committee of the Whole.

Although not beyond question, it would appear likely that the Congress does not have authority to grant voting representation in the House of Representatives to the Delegate from the District of Columbia as contemplated under H.R. 328. As the revote provisions provided for in H.Res. 78 would render the Delegate's vote in the Committee of the Whole largely symbolic, however, the amendments to the House Rules would be likely to pass constitutional muster.