District of Columbia statehood movement

The District of Columbia statehood movement is a political movement that advocates making the District of Columbia a U.S. state, to provide the residents of the District of Columbia with voting representation in the Congress and complete control over local affairs.

Since its establishment by the "District Clause" in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the United States Constitution, the District of Columbia has been a federal district under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the United States Congress. It is currently debated whether the District of Columbia could be made a state by an act of Congress or whether it would require a constitutional amendment. Alternative proposals to statehood include the retrocession of the District of Columbia and voting rights reforms. If the District of Columbia were to become a state, it would be the first state admitted to the union since 1959.

As a state, it would rank 49th by population as of 2020 (ahead of Vermont and Wyoming);^[1] 1st in population density as of 2020 (at 11,685 people/square mile compared to the next densest state, New Jersey with 1,207 people/square mile);^[2] 51st by area;^[3] 34th by GDP as of 2020;^[4] 1st by GDP per capita as of 2019 (at $177,442 it is nearly 2.4 times the next state, Massachusetts at $75,258);^[5] 1st in educational attainment in 2018 (with 59.7% of residents having a bachelor's degree and 34.0% having an advanced degree);^[6] and 6th in terms of Human Development Index as of 2018.^[7]

For most of the modern (1980–present) statehood movement, the new state's name would have been the State of New Columbia, although the Washington, D.C., Admission Act passed by the United States House of Representatives in 2020 and 2021 refers to the proposed state as the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth in honor of George Washington and Frederick Douglass.^[8][9]