The Washington, D.C. Admission Act sponsored by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton has gained considerable attention in the past year. It would establish statehood for the District of Columbia, which would allow residents voting representation in Congress for the first time. The Committee on Oversight and Reform voted 25-19 in favor of the bill on April 14, paving the way for a House floor vote in the coming weeks. H.R. 51 passed the House in the last Congress on a partisan vote of 232-180, but it died in the Republican-controlled Senate. A companion bill, S. 51, has been introduced in the Senate with support of Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, but is expected to be met with Republican opposition by filibuster.

Washington, D.C.’s lack of statehood is harshly unrepresentative. Since its residents do not belong to any state, they have no representation (by voting members) in either house. But despite having no votes in Congress, the city’s residents pay federal taxes. This results in taxation without representation, since they have no say in how their tax dollars are used. In fact, D.C. residents pay the highest per-capita federal income taxes in the country, and collectively pay more in federal income tax than the residents of 22 other states.

Providing statehood to the District would also be a large step for racial justice in the United States, since its population is 46 percent Black and 11 percent Hispanic. The Senate systematically overrepresents white voters and underrepresents voters of color, as states like Wyoming and Vermont, which are more than 90 percent white and have fewer people than D.C., both have two senators just like large states. If D.C. were to become a state, it would be the first with a plurality of Black residents, a considerable step toward giving people of color the representation they deserve in Congress. Raphael Warnock’s victory in Georgia in January made him the eleventh African-American to serve in the Senate in U.S. history. Currently, three senators are African American (Raphael Warnock, Cory Booker, and Tim Scott), and establishing statehood for D.C. could expand this group.

Given the country’s partisan gridlock, the statehood efforts have been met with opposition from Republican politicians, who believe the Democratic Party is using the issue to help their party gain two more Senate seats. Republican leaders including Mitch McConnell view the idea of D.C. statehood not as a matter of representation, but as a partisan attempt by Democrats to change the rules of an established system to gain extra votes in the Senate. Considering the Senate’s current composition, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, making D.C. a state would very likely increase the Democrats’ chances of controlling the Senate in future years. With the critical importance of Senate majorities and the current and recent close partisan balances there, it is understandable why Republicans would be unwilling to expand the Senate.

However, I believe there is nothing partisan about giving American citizens federal representation; it is the right thing to do for people who live in the District. The political ideologies of D.C. voters are irrelevant to the principle that they deserve representation, since they are American citizens and pay federal taxes. Establishing D.C. statehood would be a major achievement for racial justice and equal representation in our democracy. While there are certainly political repercussions, any hesitation toward it should be secondary to the importance of federal representation for all citizens living in the United States.