[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 82 (Wednesday, May 12, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H2202-H2203]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        REJECT THE INSULAR CASES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, today, the House is holding a hearing on 
the insular cases, doctrines which hold the territories in a perpetual 
state of colonialism.
  Earlier this year, I served as a House impeachment manager in the 
second trial of President Donald Trump. My presence on the floor of the 
U.S. Senate carried a great deal of meaning for me. It also said a lot 
about America.
  Although I was making the case, I was unable to actually cast a vote 
in the House. My constituents in the Virgin Islands, U.S. citizens, 
remain unable to vote for President, lack any voice in the Senate, and 
have only a limited vote in the House.
  The second-class treatment of the territories is not just unfair; it 
is un-American. More than 3.5 million Americans are denied the right to 
vote simply because of where they live, whether it is Puerto Rico; 
Guam; Northern Mariana Islands; American Samoa; or my home, the Virgin 
Islands of the United States. This number of people is equivalent to 
the population of the five smallest States combined, and each of the 
territories send more men and women to the military per capita than any 
State.

[[Page H2203]]

  More than 98 percent of the territorial residents are racial or 
ethnic minorities like me, a fact that cannot be a mere coincidence in 
our continuing disenfranchisement, which extends well past the century 
mark.
  Our Nation's Founders never intended our country to work this way. 
Alexander Hamilton, as a young man, arrived in New York after spending 
his formative years in my home on St. Croix. He and others risked their 
lives to reject colonialism. They wanted no part of it. They understood 
that governments derive their just powers from the consent of those 
governed.
  America has, from its inception, included U.S. territories. The 
original understanding was that the Constitution provided a promise of 
full political participation to each resident of a territory through 
eventual statehood. Until that happened, the Constitution was 
understood to fully protect their rights.
  That promise was broken after the United States began acquiring 
island territories in 1898. During that time, in a series of decisions 
known collectively as the insular cases, the Supreme Court invented an 
unprecedented new category of unincorporated territories whose 
residents were not on a path to statehood. Which territories the Court 
determined were unincorporated turned largely on the Justices at the 
time's view of the people who lived there--people they labeled in those 
court opinions as half-civilized, savages, alien races, ignorant, and 
lawless--people like Alexander Hamilton; Camille Pissarro, the founder 
of Impressionism; Edward Wilmot Blyden, the founder of Pan-Africanism; 
and me--lawless, savage.

  While other racist Supreme Court decisions from that same era by 
those same Justices--such as Plessy v. Ferguson--have long been 
overturned, the insular cases remain. The last three administrations--
Bush, Obama, Trump--have all upheld and fought for these same cases. 
Indeed, our own House Parliamentarian uses the insular cases to deny 
the people who live in the territories and their representatives full 
voting rights on this floor.
  The ramifications go well beyond just voting. We do pay billions in 
Federal taxes, yet residents of the U.S. territories are denied and 
limited access to Federal programs and support. Otherwise, eligible 
citizens in the territories are denied SSI, leaving our most vulnerable 
seniors and disabled to fend for themselves. Federal programs like 
Medicaid, SNAP, child tax credit, and the earned income tax credit are 
capped or denied altogether.
  The Supreme Court will soon tackle questions of Federal 
discrimination against citizens in the territories in United States v. 
Vaello-Madero, a case where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First 
Circuit ruled unconstitutional the arbitrary denial of SSI benefits in 
Puerto Rico.
  The Justice Department should not continue defending this case. The 
House should not continue to defend and utilize the insular cases to 
deny people living in the territories basic rights.
  Making sure that 3.5 million U.S. citizens can vote is not a partisan 
issue. Of my four other colleagues in the territories, two are 
Democrats and two are Republicans. We are not a monolithic people.
  Our country has been given a collective opportunity to ask what 
America is and who we are as a people. These questions extend to 
America's responsibilities to citizens living in the territories.
  Please reject the insular cases.

                          ____________________