DC Statehood and the Issues You Care About

DC Vote does not advocate for any particular policy outcome. We advocate for DC residents’ legal right to have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Someone can be pro-life and support statehood. Someone can disagree with DC’s local policies and still believe 700,000 Americans deserve a vote on the laws that govern them.

That said, without statehood, Congress can and does use DC as a testing ground to override policies that have nothing to do with how DC governs itself:

• Reproductive rights: Congress has used DC appropriations bills to restrict abortion access, overriding protections DC’s local government passed.
• Cannabis: DC voters legalized cannabis. Congress blocked the regulated market DC’s local government tried to set up, through budget riders that remain in place.
• Climate and environment: DC has passed progressive climate legislation that remains vulnerable to congressional override at any time.
• Gender rights and LGBTQ+ protections: strong local protections exist, all of them subject to override by a Congress DC residents cannot vote for.
• Gun safety: DC has passed its own local gun regulations, which, like every other DC law, remain subject to congressional override regardless of what DC residents or their local government decided.
• Criminal justice: Congress has repeatedly intervened in DC’s criminal code, overriding sentencing reforms passed by DC’s elected council, including blocking a full revision of DC’s criminal code in 2022.

The throughline: DC residents voted for these policies, their local government passed them, and Congress overrode them anyway. Statehood is the only way to make that DC residents’ decision instead of Congress’s.