[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4809]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



  ALL CITIZENS OF AMERICA SHOULD HAVE A VOTING REPRESENTATIVE IN THE 
                                 HOUSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor to let the House know 
that a decision has been handed down in a consolidated case, the Adams 
case and the Alexander case, challenging the denial of full voting 
rights in the House and the Senate to the residents of the Nation's 
Capital and full self-government here. In a 2-to-1 decision, the court 
ruled that because the District is not a State it does not have the 
privilege that every other American citizen has of having a voting 
representative.
  Mr. Speaker, this decision is on its way to the Supreme Court. I 
would like to note for the record the courageous lawyers who are 
appealing this decision, John Ferren, former corporation counsel who 
was in the case at that time; Charles Miller and Thomas Williamson of 
Covington and Burling who handled one of the cases pro bono; professor 
Jamin Raskin, who is responsible for much of the thinking that went 
into these cases, professor of the American University School of Law; 
and George LaRoche, who brought a separate case.
  Judge Louis Oberdorfer will be remembered by history for his ruling 
that, indeed, the District of Columbia residents are entitled to voting 
representation in this House and that the rights involved are not 
rights of States but of the people who live in the States, that the 
reference in the Constitution to the States is a term of convenience 
not meant to deny any American citizen the right to voting 
representation on this floor.
  In going to the courts, District residents signal that there has been 
a failure of the political process. I remember a failure of the 
political process when I was a school child in this town. The political 
process failed and that is why the District of Columbia was among five 
jurisdictions that went to the Supreme Court and finally got that court 
to declare that separate but equal was in violation of the Constitution 
of the United States.
  I trust that the failure of the political process here, the failure 
of the Congress to grant full voting rights to the residents of the 
District of Columbia, will produce a similarly favorable decision in 
the Supreme Court of the United States for the residents of the capital 
city.
  Judge Louis Oberdorfer's wise and scholarly opinion raises our hopes 
that there will not be five justices of the Supreme Court in the 21st 
century that are willing to sign their names to an opinion that would 
deny voting rights in the national legislature to any citizen of the 
United States. One would think that no citizen on the planet would be 
so denied today.
  At the very least, what this body should prepare itself to do now, 
pending a favorable decision of the Supreme Court or other action, is 
to restore the vote I won in 1993 for residents of the District of 
Columbia on the House floor in the Committee of the Whole. It would 
appear that at the very least, the residents of the District of 
Columbia, who pay full Federal income taxes the way the residents of 
other Members do, would be entitled to that respect.
  I know that there are Members on the other side, because they have 
gone with me through the Committee on Rules, who also believe that the 
taxpaying residents of the District of Columbia should be recognized on 
this House floor to the maximum extent possible, and certainly that 
would mean a vote in the Committee of the Whole.
  Meanwhile, there is an organization which has been energized to start 
energizing the country by these decisions. It is called D.C. Vote, and 
my hat is off to D.C. Vote which is raising consciousness first in the 
District of Columbia and then intends to raise the consciousness of our 
country to what we know would not be condoned by the American people 
and that is that any people that pay taxes in this country would be 
left without their full representation in the Congress of the United 
States.
  The ball now comes to the floor of this House. The ball comes to 
those with a political and a moral conscience, to those who serve in 
this


House to make sure that the residents who pay taxes equal to the taxes 
their residents pay get from this House, from the people's House, the 
maximum in representation that the people's House can offer.

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