Legal News

Did Holder Violate Protocol on D.C. Voting Issue?

By Ashby Jones

We just can’t get enough on the question of whether D.C. residents should get a congressional vote, partly because we find those “Taxation Without Representation” license plates so, well, feisty. But the issue potentially grew more explosive with news that AG Eric Holder may have breached protocol to get an opinion on the issue that he liked.

The quick backstory: A bill pending in Congress would give the representative chosen by D.C. residents a full vote in Congress. Given that that representative would likely be a Democrat for the forseeable future, the bill would also add a representative to Utah, which leans strongly Republican. Click here for an earlier LB post.

But there’s one looming problem with the bill: it could be unconstitutional. According to a story out Wednesday in the Washington Post, Justice Department lawyers came to that conclusion earlier in the year. Unsatisfied, Holder, a longtime D.C. resident, ordered up a second opinion from the Solicitor General’s office. This time, the opinion got the constitutional thumbs up. (The office was reportedly asked for the opinion before the Senate confirmed Elena Kagan as the new solicitor general.)

The constitutional issue revolves around a very simple fact: Washington, D.C., is not a state. Some experts point to a constitutional requirement that House members be chosen “every second year by the people of the several states.” Others argue that the Constitution gives Congress broad power over the District, including the ability to grant it a full House seat.

The bill could reach the House floor in May. The bill appeared to be on the verge of passing last month before stalling when pro-gun legislators tried to attach an amendment weakening city gun laws.

But first, writes the Post, the AG could take some heat for what some people view as immersing his own politics into the issue.

M. Edward Whelan III, who was a deputy at OLC during the Bush administration, said when informed of the matter that Holder’s decision to override the office’s conclusions amounted to a “blatant abuse” of the office’s purpose.

“The attorney general weighed the advice of different people inside the department, as well as the opinions of legal scholars, and made his own determination that the D.C. voting rights bill is constitutional,” said a spokesman for Holder.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 01, 2009 (boomark / email).