Press Release: U.S. Senator Michael D. Brown Barred From Testifying on D.C. Statehood Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs

News Release — DC shadow Sen. Michael D. Brown

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  June 17, 2021

CONTACT:  Senator Michael D. Brown

(Washington, DC)—United States Senator Michael D. Brown (D-D.C.) today was denied the opportunity to testify before the full committee of Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs (HSGAC) in the U.S. Senate on S. 51, on June 22, 2021 – only the second time in American history that D.C. statehood will come before the Senate.

The mandate that created Senator Brown’s office requires that he “Shall inform the Congress and individual members of Congress that the District of Columbia residents meet the standards traditionally required by Congress for the admission of a United States territory as a state of the United States.” (§ 1-123, Code of the District of Columbia)

Despite the fact that Senator Brown has been elected three times to be the voice of the disenfranchised people of the District of Columbia and has served faithfully for more than a decade, the professional staff of HSGAC Chairman Gary C. Peters told Sen. Brown that they did not reach out to him for his testimony due to their strategy of controlling the testimony of Republican members of the committee. 

Brown, who testified at the first and only U.S. Senate hearing on D.C. statehood in 2014, was told that he was not welcome to participate in the hearing because “the agenda had been set and his testimony was unnecessary.”

VIEW THE 2014 SENATE HEARING ON D.C. STATEHOOD – Equality for the District of Columbia: Discussing the Implications of S. 132, the New Columbia Admission Act of 2013, Full Committee Hearing, September 15, 2014:  https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/equality-for-the-district-of-columbia-discussing-the-implications-of-s-132-the-new-columbia-admission-act-of-2013.

Senator Brown said in a statement:  “To not let the duly elected senators from the District of Columbia address the Senate on the issue of D.C. statehood is not appropriate.  I have worked on this issue tirelessly for the last 15 years and to disregard my testimony is outrageous.”

Brown asked, Of what use is the office to which I’ve been elected if not to speak on behalf of those who elected me?”  “How can those seeking democracy use a process that is ultimately undemocratic and ignore the duly elected senators of the 700,000 D.C. residents who they seek to enfranchise?” Sen. Brown asks.

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