Status Suit Challenges D.C.'s Disenfranchisement
by Sam Smith
September 1998
Volume 35 Number 7
Activist attorney George LaRoche has filed suit asking the federal court to declare D.C. residents entitled to the have equal footing with all other citizens of the US. This writer is one of 20 plaintiffs in the case.
What makes the suit significant is that LaRoche is raising an issue never before litigated: does Congress have the right to discriminate invidiously between the 5,000 federal enclaves over which it exercises plenary power? There are some one million people who live in these enclaves—government property such as military bases, hospitals and the like—and if they were all lumped together they would be in aggregate about the size of Vermont.
For 150 years all these enclaves were denied suffrage, but today only D.C. is treated as a non-self-governing entity. In every other enclave the citizens are now members of the political communities of the various states in which the enclaves are located. In none of these enclaves—save D.C.—has Congress:
- imposed a non-republican form of government
- prevented residents from electing representatives to the US Congress
- instituted direct and intimate control over the most minute aspects of local governance.
The suit argues that it is within the power of the President and the Congress to treat this city just as it does other enclaves and that there is no constitutionally valid governmental reason for not doing so.
Meanwhile, some in the city’s establishment are trying to revive the notion that representation in Congress is all we really need. While virtually ignoring the LaRoche suit, the Washington Post gave front page Metro coverage (plus two photos) to a petition to Congress on the issue filed by a group spearheaded by Corporation Counsel John Ferren and based on a law review article by James Raskin. If Congress by any chance fails to heed the petition, it is likely that the group will file suit.
The two actions echo a repeated division over D.C. status. Voting representation has traditionally been favored by conservatives while progressives have pressed for full democracy including representation. As far back as the 1920s, the reactionary Washington Star newspaper ran a crusade for representation along the lines proposed by Ferren and Raskin. During the 1970s, years, dollars, energies, and column inches were wasted on an ultimately (and dramatically) futile effort by then-D.C. Delegate to Congress Walter Fauntroy to win a constitutional amendment granting the city representation. Meanwhile, the fledging statehood movement had to struggle for attention.
There are cultural and political reasons for the divide. One of the city’s deepest secrets is how many of its elites—both white and black —have never really liked the idea of self-government. They would rather use their Roladexes than the ballot box. A campaign for representation distracts the city from more democratic solutions and helps to keep full democracy at bay, which is why, for example, the Washington Post has found representation drives so appealing.
Secondly, the city’s mandarin class is mainly interested in national politics. It is perfectly happy to have city services provided under a dictatorship but is frustrated by its lack of leverage in Congress. Representation allows these elite D.C. residents to become national players just as though they lived in a real state. Besides, their kids don’t go to UDC and they don’t use D.C. General.
Representation is an essential part of full democracy, but should not be pressed at the expense of full democracy. Unfortunately, this is once again what is happening. The bulk of the city’s grievances are those of denial of self-government rather than of non-representation. Matters not addressed by representation include DC’s lack of local control over its budget, prosecutions, courts, planning, taxation, economic development, legislation, and prisoners. One remedy being considered by the Ferren group would even be antithetical to self-government: allowing D.C. residents to vote in other states, i.e. a further dispersal of the city’s already pitiful political power.
At best, even if Ferren, Raskin et al, win, they will leave the city no better off than was Algeria and other French colonies before independence. They, too, were represented in the legislature, but still considered themselves unfree. They were right.
Sam Smith is editor of The Progressive Review. The article is reprinted with permission from the D.C. News Service web page which can be accessed at http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/freedc.htm. The Progressive Review can be contacted at 1739 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C., 20009; (202) 232-5544.
