DC Statehood and the Constitution

Is DC statehood constitutional? 

Yes. The Washington, DC Admission Act complies with the Admissions Clause, the District Clause, and the 23rd Amendment.

The Admissions ClauseCongress has the authority to admit new states by simple majority vote. All 37 states added to the union since 1787 were admitted this way, and none were admitted by constitutional amendment. There is also no consent requirement standing in the way: when Maryland ceded the land that became DC, it relinquished that land to Congress “in full and absolute right, and exclusive jurisdiction.” Maryland does not get a say in DC’s admission as a state.

The District ClauseThe District Clause gives Congress full authority over the federal district and sets a maximum size of ten miles square. It sets no minimum. Congress has already exercised this authority once, reducing the district’s size by 30 percent in 1846 when it returned the Virginia-side land to Virginia. The DC Admission Act uses that same authority to shrink the federal district again, this time to the area covering the Capitol Complex, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the National Mall, while the residential and commercial areas become the new state.

The 23rd AmendmentThis is the piece people most often get wrong. The 23rd Amendment gives the federal district electoral votes, but it does not require a minimum population or a specific location for that district. The DC Admission Act repeals the enabling act that assigns those electoral votes to the shrunken federal district. Once that enabling act is repealed, the district’s participation in the Electoral College becomes moot, which is expected to lead to repeal of the 23rd Amendment itself by Congress and the states. This does not require passing the statehood bill and separately amending the Constitution. The repeal path is a consequence of the bill’s own mechanics.

Admission has no population prerequisiteThe Constitution sets no population, size, or economic threshold for statehood. Still, DC exceeds any practical benchmark: its population is larger than two states, it would be one of six states with a population under one million, its GDP is larger than that of 17 states, and it pays more in federal taxes per capita than any state and more in total than 20 states.

Who backs thisThirty-nine legal scholars have attested to the bill’s constitutionality. The bill has passed the House twice, in 2020 and 2021, and has been reintroduced in both chambers in the 119th Congress.