Would DC Statehood Require a Constitutional Amendment or State Approval? DC Statehood has been in the news recently, and I'm wondering about the logistics of it. First, take this excerpt from Article IV Section 3 of the Constitution: New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress. Although I would imagine DC is not considered to be under the jurisdiction of Maryland or Virginia, it seems to be at the junction of the two states, right? Also, how would we define &quot;part?&quot; Is DC a &quot;part&quot; of Maryland? So would DC statehood technically require approval from the Maryland and Virginia state legislatures? Now, here's an excerpt from Article I Section 8 The Congress shall have Power To… exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such Dis­trict (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Con­gress, become the Seat of the Gov­ernment of the United States… Giving Congress the power to &quot;exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatshoever, over such District&quot; seems pretty mutually exclusive with statehood. Would the Constitution need to be amended for DC statehood?
Probably not Maryland gave consent by ceding the land that became DC back when DC was first formed. Virginia had originally ceded a matching piece of land, which would have made the district a neat square 10 miles by 10 miles. Decades later, the Virginia General Assembly voted (in February 1846) to request the return of Alexandria in a process known as retrocession. On July 9, 1846, Congress voted to return all the area that had been ceded by Virginia. Since then, the district has consisted only of the land originally ceded by Maryland. When Article IV Section 3 says &quot;by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states&quot; it means by joining two states into one new one, or by cutting off parts of two of more states and making them a state -- doing either of those requires the consent of the states involved, but not an amendment. Article I Section 8 could be satisfied by creating a smaller district, perhaps just the Mall and the public buildings surrounding it, including the White House and the Capitol, but no residential areas. In any case nothing in Article I Section 8 mandates the creation or retention of a Federal district. It could be argued that making DC a state would require the consent of Maryland, which once included that land. Or it could be argued that Maryland's original cession left it with no further authority over that land (I favor the latter view). But no consent of Virginia would be needed, because none of its original land is included in the current district. In any case, Article IV Section 3 seems to give Congress this power, with no need for an amendment, only possibly for Maryland approval. So it appears that the primary body that would have to approve statehood for DC would be Congress. Whether approval from Maryland would also be needed is unclear -- probably not. No other body would need to approve. However, there is no case law on the matter, and such a move might well be challenged by those who would not want DC to elect two senators.
The comments have basically covered this, but: It's a slightly weird parallel structure ("who shall not be at least 25, and been a citizen for 7 years, and who shall not be a resident"). The Constitution is not written in fluid 21st-century English. But the obviously correct way to parse the sentence is that no one can be a representative who isn't a 25-year-old or older who's been a citizen for at least 7 years; furthermore, no one can be a representative who wasn't a resident of the state they represent when they were elected. With some parts of the Constitution (like the Second Amendment), the drafting results in actual disputes about the intended meaning. With other parts (like here), only one reading makes any sense. It's the same with the requirements to be President. The Constitution says "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President," which could be read as "you're not eligible unless, when the Constitution was adopted, you were either a citizen of the US or a natural-born citizen." But that's a silly reading, so "at the time of the Adoption" is read as only applying to "a Citizen of the United States:" natural-born citizens are eligible period, and people who were born before the US was a thing but were citizens by the time the Constitution was adopted were grandfathered in.
The District is not a state, and does not function as one. The District does not elect any Senators, nor any Representatives. It does elect one &quot;Delegate&quot; who sits in the House, and may speak in debate, but does not have the right to vote. The Constitution allows congress to exercise &quot;Exclusive legislation 8in all cases whatsoever&quot; over the District. However, since 1973 the Congress has allowed limited &quot;home rule&quot; in the district, although it could cancel this at any time by a new law. The district has a local government, but it more closely resembles the government of a major city than that of a state. It is led by a Mayor and a city council. It is specified in some Federal laws, and one Constutiuonal provision that for certain limited purposes the Districtm should be treated &quot;as if it were&quot;, a state. There have been a number of proposals to make the District into a state. The most recent ones have proposed to do this by redefining the &quot;Capital District&quot; into the White House, the Capital building, the Mall between them, buildings adjacent to the mall, and a small adjacent area. The rest of the district would, under such proposals, be admitted as a new state. Congress has the power to admit new states, so this would not require a Constitutional Amendment. But no such proposal has yet passed Congress. There are some special provisions in the way the District is Governed. For one thing, to compensate for the many public building and facilities (which pay no taxes) and the special demands on the District of the Federal Government, Congress provides some of the funds needed to run the district, with the rest coming from local taxes. Congress must approve the District Budget, and can veto local laws. See the Wikipedia article for more detail.
The method of proposing an amendment by way of Convention has never been used. Thus, procedural aspects such as how members of such a convention would be chosen have also not been settled: In the modern era, scholars have debated various issues, including: (1) how delegates to the convention should be chosen; (2) whether Congress, state legislatures, or the delegates should set rules of procedure for the convention; (3) the vote threshold would be required to propose an amendment in convention; and (4) how voting rights on a proposed amendment should be apportioned among the states. (Constitution Annotated, &quot;ArtV.3.3 Proposals of Amendments by Convention&quot;)
To pick up on your comment 'Does this mean if I wish to build a chair for personal use, then since trade of chairs exists between states, Congress has the authority to outlaw possession or manufacturing of chairs?': Yes. For example, the US Congress can legislate to prohibit a farmer from growing wheat for use on his own farm, on the basis that there is interstate trade in wheat and therefore the Commerce Clause permits Congress to regulate the growing of wheat: Wickard v Filburn (1942) 317 US 111. If you grow marijuana, or build a chair, or whatever, you conceivably affect the number of marijuanas, chairs, etc that are traded between states. Therefore you affect interstate commerce. Therefore the US Congress can regulate you. The fact that your marijuana or your chair or your what is trivial in the scheme of the national economy is irrelevant if the aggregation of all regulated marijuana, chairs or wheat is significant: 317 US 111, 127-128. If the law didn't prohibit possession of marijuana absolutely but instead prohibited, say, the carrying of marijuana in schools, then the US Congress might have trouble relying on the Commerce Clause: see United States v Lopez (1995) 514 US 549 and replace 'marijuana' with 'handguns' (OK the marijuana/handgun analogy is bad but hopefully this illustrates that there are at least some limits on Congress' power -- it's not just 'any physical object that relates whatsoever to interstate trade therefore unfettered federal legislative power').
Original jurisdiction is not necessarily exclusive jurisdiction. [T]he original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, in cases where a State is a party, refers to those cases in which, according to the grant of power made in the preceding clause, jurisdiction might be exercised in consequence of the character of the party, and an original suit might be instituted in any of the federal Courts, not to those cases in which an original suit might not be instituted in a federal Court. Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 (1821) However, "in the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress made the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction exclusive in suits between two or more states [...]. The Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over the remainder of suits to which a state was a party was to be concurrent." (Federal Judicial Centre - History of the Federal Judiciary)
Let's look at the Ur-example of a free-speech law, and the most wide-ranging, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. It says (my emphasis): Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. This limitation applies only to the government. Indeed, it has been argued that this limitation only applies to the legislative branch of government and not to the executive (except when exercising legislatively delegated power) or judicial branches. Certainly, the courts have held that it is within their power to issue "gag" restraining orders. Notwithstanding, it imposes no restrictions on how non-government actors can limit your free speech. The owner of a shopping centre can require you not to evangelise, the owner of a stadium can require you not to use offensive language and the owner of a social media platform can restrict your speech in any way they wish. You have a right to talk - they have a right not to give you a platform.
This depends on how far along you're waiting for court rulings to set in, and if you count laws of Congress passed under the 13th amendment's enforcement clause. There were quite a lot of things that got ruled as violations of the 13th and 14th amendments (mostly the 14th), but many were not ruled or legislated that way for decades. Some were even ruled to have an essentially opposite effect of what the current (overturning) precedents do. "Separate but equal" was challenged on 13th amendment grounds, but was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and wasn't overturned, on 14th amendment grounds, until 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Your particular situation sounds like peonage, which was outlawed by Congress in 1867 via the enforcement clause. This law specifically banned "the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise." However, peonage cases continued to make their way into the courts for more than 40 years thereafter, such as Clyatt v. United States (1905)&mdash; which ruled that peonage was involuntary servitude&mdash; and Bailey v. Alabama (1911). These cases affirmed that the 13th amendment abolished not just chattel slavery but essentially all forms of involuntary or indentured servitude (except as punishment for a crime). Though exactly what qualifies as "involuntary servitude" is still something courts decide on a case-by-case basis; the draft doesn't, nor does mandatory community service to graduate high school.