Members of Congress, Civil Rights Leaders Call on Biden’s DOJ to Reject Racist Insular Cases Doctrine

WASHINGTON — At a press conference held Wednesday on Capitol Hill, a coalition of elected officials, civil rights organizations, and advocates announced that they had called on the U.S. Department of Justice to publicly and definitively denounce the racist doctrine established by the Insular Cases.

The cases are a series of Supreme Court rulings from 1901 to 1922 that established an unequal, colonial framework for U.S. territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In the rulings, the court declared that the territories were not fully incorporated into the U.S. and that the Constitution did not fully apply there. Most infamously, the rulings referred to the territories and their inhabitants as "alien races" and "savage tribes."

Over the years, a groundswell of opposition to the overtly racist rhetoric has been rising, however previous administrations have failed to address the issue. Most recently the Supreme Court has, twice in two years, passed on opportunities to repudiate its earlier rulings, while the Biden Department of Justice in 2021 relied on the Insular Cases rulings to argue that people born in U.S. territories have no constitutional right to certain United States citizenship rights.

"In 2024, no one should use racist language from the Insular Cases to deny citizenship rights to people born in U.S. territories, to people who decide to reside in U.S. territories," said Stacey Plaskett, Congressional representative for the U.S. Virgin Islands. She contrasted President Biden’s arguments against denying federal benefits to residents of U.S. territories with the actions and legal arguments of his Justice Department. “He declared that there could be no second class citizen in the United States of America. Yet, his own Justice Department and its leadership continue to rely on cases to argue that people in those territories have no right to hold U.S. citizenship; that citizenship in U.S. territories is a mere privilege for Congress to extend or retract at their whim. And we know what this Congress looks like. We don't want to have our citizenship based upon that,” the congresswoman declared.