NEW YORK TIMES

February 11, 2004

International Panel Backs Seat for Capital in Congress

 

By JAMES DAO

 

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — They took their complaint to court, and lost. They implored Congress to act, and failed. So they went international, and won.

 

In a case brought by voting rights activists from Washington, an international human rights commission has ruled that the United States is violating international law by refusing to give residents of the nation's capital the power to elect members of Congress.

 

The ruling, issued on Dec. 29 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an agency of the Organization of American States, is not binding. But it brings the moral authority of a major international organization — one the United States belongs to and helps finance — to bear on Capitol Hill, which for 200 years has rebuffed proposals to give Congressional seats to Washington.

 

"No other federal state in the Western Hemisphere denies the residents of its federal capital the right to vote for representatives in their national legislature," the ruling said. The commission called on Congress to provide "an effective remedy" that would guarantee this city's residents representation in Congress.

 

Washington has 340,000 registered voters, who can cast ballots in presidential elections. But it has only a nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives, and no seats in the Senate.

 

Tim Cooper, a human rights activist and resident of the city who brought the complaint, said that if nothing else, the commission's ruling might shame Congress into action.

 

"This decision represents America's political Achilles' heel," Mr. Cooper asserted. "It strips the king of democracy of his robe."

 

Other experts in international human rights law were not so sure. They said that while the Inter-American Commission was generally well respected by human rights advocates, its rulings were not always taken seriously in national capitals, particularly Washington.

 

Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, said the United States participated actively in the commission's work to push its own human rights agenda but did not recognize the inter-American court that enforces the commission's rulings. That, Mr. Ratner said, makes those rulings toothless in this country.

 

Indeed, several Congressional officials said the ruling on voting rights in Washington would most likely be ignored. But they acknowledged that it could become a public relations embarrassment for the United States, particularly at a time when critics abroad describe the nation as being inclined to ignore international agreements and act unilaterally.

 

The State Department, which argued the government's case before the commission, declined to comment on the ruling.

 

The seven-member commission — the United States currently does not hold a seat — is known for delving into the murky politics of autocratic regimes, investigating abuses by paramilitary groups and criticizing the mistreatment of prisoners.

 

But it has also urged the Bush administration to resolve the status of prisoners from Afghanistan who are being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and has found the United States in violation of international law for imposing death sentences on defendants who were minors when they committed their crimes.

 

In its recent ruling, the commission agreed with Mr. Cooper that the case should be heard by an international panel because "domestic remedies," including the federal courts and efforts to win Congressional legislation or a constitutional amendment, had all failed.

 

The commission concluded that the United States had violated provisions of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, to which the nation is a signer.

 

In its response to the commission, the State Department argued that Mr. Cooper had not proved that any rights had been violated. "These are sensitive issues better left to domestic political processes," the department told the commission in a memorandum.

 

Walter Smith, executive director of the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, which brought a federal suit seeking voting rights here, said he hoped that the new ruling would prod Congress into supporting legislation that would give Washington a single seat in the House.

 

That proposal, by Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia, would balance the one seat for Washington, an overwhelmingly Democratic city, with an additional seat for heavily Republican Utah. There would be no change in the Senate.

 

Democrats, typically champions of voting rights for Washingtonians, have opposed the Davis plan out of concern that Utah's Republican-controlled Legislature would redraw Congressional lines to unseat the state's lone Democrat in Congress, Jim Matheson.

 

"We go to war to spread democracy, yet we don't have democracy at home," said Mr. Smith, of the Appleseed Center. "Maybe this will shame us into it."