The question of D.C. statehood has been given new life due to President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard. Despite the merits of statehood, a Northeastern legal expert says, “It’s not going to happen soon.”
It’s the question many in Washington, D.C., are asking in response to President Donald Trump’s recent deployment of the National Guard in the district. Over the years, there have been many efforts to achieve D.C. statehood, which has long had widespread support from D.C. residents.
However, the recent actions in the nation’s capital have given new life to old debates around D.C.’s status and have left many wondering: What would it take for D.C. to become a state?
“Surprisingly, among the many things that can happen to the government, creating a new state, in general, is really easy,” says Jeremy Paul, a law professor at Northeastern University. “All you need is the majority of both houses to pass a law and the president to sign it.”
However, that simple process is complicated by D.C.’s unique status within the U.S.
In 1789, the Constitution established a federal district “not exceeding 10 miles square” that would serve as the seat of the federal government. Congress established that district along the Potomac River in 1790, creating it from parts of Maryland and Virginia.
As a result, D.C. has some of the functions of a state, county and city, with a budget that’s approved by Congress. It operates its own school system and Medicaid program and also receives federal grants that typically go to states.
There are key ways that D.C. is limited by its federal district status. D.C. residents have long contested that they do all the things that U.S. citizens do — they pay taxes, vote and serve on juries and in the military — but lack a voice in Congress or control over many of their own local operations.
D.C. gets three electoral votes in presidential elections but has no representative in the Senate. It has a delegate in the House of Representatives, a non-voting role currently occupied by Eleanor Holmes Norton. Norton can vote in committees, introduce legislation and participate in debates over legislation, but she cannot vote on House bills.
“The idea that an area with more people than existing states is disenfranchised, I just don’t see any argument for that,” Paul says, noting that D.C. has more people in it than both Wyoming and Vermont. “Why should there be all these people who are not represented in Congress?”
In some ways, D.C. could have an easier pathway to statehood than other places in the U.S. Typically, if an area of the U.S. wanted to pursue statehood, it would have to reckon with being inside another state. For example, if Berkeley, California, wanted to become its own state, it would need approval from the California legislature in addition to congressional approval.
D.C. doesn’t have that particular problem, although “there are some people who say D.C. used to be part of Maryland and, therefore, you would need permission from the Maryland legislature,” Paul says.
The constitutional requirement for a federal district has provided some pushback to the prospect of D.C. statehood. But Paul says all it would take would be “to carve out a small area in the middle of D.C., like the area that has the capitol building, and that small area would not be part of the state.”
A 2016 referendum overwhelmingly approved by D.C. residents proposed a smaller federal district made up of various federal buildings like the White House and U.S. Capitol along with the area around the National Mall.
One of the biggest sticking points around D.C. statehood has been the question of where its three electoral votes would go, since the 23rd Amendment stipulates that the U.S. capital must appoint three members of the Electoral College. If the capital became a smaller carved-out area largely defined by federal property, it would ultimately have a voting population of somewhere between 30 and 50 people.
As a result, some argue it would give the president, vice president and their families outsized influence over the election because they suddenly make up a larger proportion of that voting body.
In response, the Washington, D.C., Admission Act, which passed through the House in 2020 before dying in the Senate, proposed repealing the laws around how the district chooses its electoral members and mandated that Congress vote on repealing the 23rd Amendment. That’s a heavy lift, since repealing an amendment requires both congressional approval and approval from three-quarters of the states.
There are still current statehood efforts underway — Norton and Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen reintroduced a similar bill this year — but Paul notes the current political climate makes it particularly challenging.
“D.C. is one of the most Democratic areas in the entire country, so if D.C. were to become a state it would be almost automatically giving the Democratic party two additional Senate seats and one additional House seat,” Paul says. “Why would the Republicans want to support that?”
Paul admits “it’s not going to happen soon,” but that “it would be much more likely to happen in the context of more radical reform: changing the electoral college, changing the Senate.”