Revisiting the “Insular Cases”
US Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch issued a concurring opinion in April on the territorial clause of the US Constitution. Shortly after, a petition was filed asking the justices to review the Insular Cases, which were “issued between 1901 and 1922, [and] said so-called unincorporated territories had second-class status because, as one justice put it in 1901, they were “peopled with an uncivilized race” that was “absolutely unfit to receive” the “immediate bestowal of citizenship.”” Included in these territories is Puerto Rico. Find the full NYT article on the argument to revisit these decisions here.
Puerto Ricans have been considered US citizens since 1917 but are still unable to vote in US federal elections, and their singular member of US Congress does not have voting power (from Why Is Puerto Rico’s Political Status So Complicated?). They were also ruled this year to not have a constitutional right to all federal benefits. The ACLU has a piece on how Hurricane Maria “exposed the U.S.’s Long Neglect of Puerto Rico” from 2017, found here.