The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Civil Rights Monitor
Winter 2007

• Introduction

On the Hill

• The Year in Judicial and Executive Nominations
• D.C. Voting Rights: Closer than Ever
• Hate Crimes Bill Moves through Congress
• Fighting to Preserve and Restore Workers' Rights
• The Immigration Reform Debate Continues
• Congress Begins Addressing Subprime Mortgage Fallout
• Successes and Setbacks on ENDA
• Backlash against the REAL ID Act Grows

Executive Branch

• Deja Vu at the FCC?

In the Courts

• Supreme Court Hands Down Major Decision on School Integration

In the States

• New Threats to Affirmative Action

LCCREF Activities

• Civil Rights Enforcement Takes Center Stage
• Leadership Conference Steps Up Anti-Poverty Efforts
• New Civil Rights Partnership Calls Attention to Nation's High School Crisis
• Why Americans Should Care about the Great Switch to DTV
• President Clinton, John Hope Franklin, and Tammy Duckworth Are 2007 Hubert H. Humphrey Honorees

DC Voting Rights: Closer than Ever

For a time, 2007 seemed to be the year that voting representation for the District of Columbia would become a reality.

The D.C. Voting Rights Act passed the House of Representatives in April (241-177). But it was defeated in the Senate in September, despite garnering more support -- 57 senators voted for it -- than ever before.

The bill would have raised House membership to 437 members by giving the District of Columbia one seat and an additional seat to Utah, a state that was short-changed in the 2001 reapportionment.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D. D.C., and Rep. Thomas M. Davis, R.Va., co-sponsored the bipartisan bill in the House. Reps. Norton and Davis had originally hoped for 2006 passage in Congress, but the House leadership failed to bring it to the floor. With a change in leadership, supporters were optimistic for 2007.

A 2005 poll found that 82 percent of Americans supported full House representation for residents of the District.

Despite broadbased and bipartisan support, the bill faced opposition on constitutional grounds, on the theory that the Constitution did not give Congress the authority to grant representation to residents of the District of Columbia. Opponents argued that only a constitutional amendment could grant Congress such power.

Momentum on the bill picked up in March when it passed the House Judiciary Committee (21-15). On the heels of the committee vote, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, calling the bill's passage D.C.'s "number one priority," joined forces with 2,000 people to voice support for D.C. voting rights at a Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) and DC Vote march on April 16.

Civil rights groups lauded the April 19 passage of the D.C. Voting Rights Bill in the House. LCCR President and CEO Wade Henderson said passage of the bill was "long overdue." He added that "this country continues to refine and align itself with our founders' democratic principles," and the bill's passage was a step forward in that direction.

However, the bill still faced the threat of a filibuster in the Senate and a presidential veto.

On May 15, 2007, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee heard testimony in support of the bill from LCCR's Henderson; Sen. Joe Lieberman, I. Conn.; Jack Kemp, former Republican Congressman from New York; Mayor Adrian Fenty; and Viet D. Dinh, former assistant attorney general for constitutional matters under President Bush, and others.

Sen. Lieberman, a co-sponsor of the bill in the Senate, characterized the passage of the D.C. Voting Rights Act of 2007 as "mending a tear in the fabric of our American democracy."

Former Rep. Kemp asked fellow Republicans to preserve the rich civil rights legacy of the Republican party, called opposition to D.C. voting rights "embarrassing to the party of Abraham Lincoln." The Republican party, Kemp said, had "a chance to be recorded on the right side of a civil rights issue."

Opponents echoed the same constitutional arguments made in the House. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University Law School and the only witness of eight to testify against the bill, said that it violated the constitutional condition that representatives be elected by the states.

Viet D. Dinh disputed this claim, arguing that the Constitution empowers Congress to "exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever" over the District, a power that includes granting representation.

Heartened by the support, the civil rights community continued to push for passage of the bill in the Senate, holding national call-in days for the public and an audio briefing for the media to explain why District residents should have elected representation.

"Our country is fighting wars abroad in the name of democracy, yet we continue to deny residents of our nation's capital their basic democratic right of representation in Congress," LCCR's Henderson told media participating in the call.

The day before the Senate vote, DC Vote and LCCR organized a rally in front of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Rep. Norton, Mayor Fenty, and Jack Kemp spoke to reporters about the importance of the bill and urged supporters to contact their senators. "Not since segregation has the Senate blocked a voting rights bill," Fenty told the crowd.

Nonetheless, on September 18, 2007, the Senate fell three votes shy of the 60 needed to bring the bill to a vote.

Supporters were disappointed, but pledged continued commitment to the D.C. voting rights struggle.