You mean other than when we ceded the part of DC that came from Virginia back to Virginia?
So the district was specifically created by “cessions from states”. And the precedent is that if the land ceded is not necessary for the seat of the government that it is simply retroceded.
I have a feeling that this would wind up in the SCOTUS. The Constitution doesn’t specifically require that ceded land be retroceded, but given that there is exactly one possibility for precedent and that is precisely what happened… guessing the current SCOTUS would say “no”. And obviously all (or at least most) of the red states are going to object. First hit when I googled “DC Constitution” was the Texas Attorney General vowing to fight it. Second hit was a 1993 paper by the Heritage Foundation claiming that it would require a Constitutional amendment. I admittedly didn’t see if they addressed the notion of splitting DC into part that would remain the seat of government and part that would not.
Still, I think the House vote in favor of DC statehood is approximately as meaningful as all of those House votes to repeal Obamacare back in the day. The SCOTUS would surely elect to hear any such cases…
Did you not read the thread? This point was already discussed.
I read it. I was assuming you hadn’t, since I had already brought this up prior to your post.
I stand by my point about no precedent, then. DC was mostly open space with only Alexandria in it on the Virginia side. The territory we’re talking about is now a major urban core.
I think it’s virtually impossible for SCOTUS to deny statehood unless they just ignore the law entirely. Congress has the final authority in deciding what is a state and what isn’t. If you want to split a state, it requires the approval of the state in question and Congress.
There was never any intention for DC to become a population center, but it has, and so I think statehood for DC make sense.
Except that the Constitution specifies that it be apart from other states or something close to that.
They will hang their hats on that, and the retrocession precedent. Yes, it will be political, but so is making them a state.
No, it doesn’t. It says that there has to exist a federal district no more than 10 miles square, and leaves it to Congress to define that. This bill does two things:
- Reducing the size of the federal district
- Granting the now unorganized territory that was removed from the federal district statehood.
Virginia WANTED their land back, and it ended up not being used once the federal district was constructed, so the federal government retroceded it. Maryland doesn’t want their land back, and there is no way to retrocede it without their permission. States are sovereign, the federal government can’t change their borders without their permission (other than in weird border dispute cases, but that’s just ruling on what the actual border is, not changing them).