By El Nuevo Día - Washington D. C.- The heads of the Senate and House of Representatives of Puerto Rico stressed today, Tuesday, before the U.S. Supreme Court that denying residents of the island the same rights and privileges of other U.S. citizens is discriminatory and should be unconstitutional.
In arguments presented in the Vaello Madero case, attorneys for Senate President José Luis Dalmau Santiago and House Speaker Rafael "Tatito" Hernández Montañez argued that Puerto Rico's exclusion from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program represents discrimination based on race and/or national origin.
In that sense, they agreed with the Puerto Rican Department of Justice - which represents the administration of Pedro Pierluisi - that the U.S. Supreme Court should also reverse the Insular Cases doctrine, which determined that the island is an unincorporated territory that "belongs to but is not part of" the United States, and emphasized, with racist expressions, that not all the rights of the U.S. Constitution apply to Puerto Rico.
The federal First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2020 that the U.S. government violated the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal protection of the laws, by excluding Puerto Rico from SSI, which primarily benefits low-income seniors and the disabled.
Since August 2020, the U.S. government has appealed the decision, a challenge that has been upheld by Joe Biden's administration.
The U.S. Supreme Court case is based on the federal government's efforts to collect from Puerto Rican José Luis Vaello Madero some $28,081 that SSI paid him as a resident of Puerto Rico. Vaello Madero began receiving benefits as a New York resident before moving to the island.
The Puerto Rico Senate's 'friend of the court' motion argues that the Insular Cases and others that validate limiting the rights of the island's resident citizens represent an "outdated, discriminatory, repugnant and, above all, constructed and unfounded constitutional view that the plenary powers of Congress over Puerto Rico and the millions of U.S. citizens residing on the island are akin to absolute, monarchical or tyrannical power and can be exercised without regard to the limits and protections imposed by the rest of the U.S. Constitution."
The Senate argument - written by attorney Edwin Quiñones - further challenges the U.S. government's claims that Puerto Rico residents' access to SSI would cause a dislocation in the island's economy and was justified because they normally do not pay federal income taxes.
He also stated that "while not all U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico pay federal taxes in the same manner as their counterparts on the mainland, it would be remiss to argue that there is no contribution to the federal treasury".
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives' appeal also rejects the claims of Joe Biden's administration that the implementation of SSI would be an imposition on the island's local government and its fiscal autonomy.
The pleading filed by Lower House attorneys Emil Rodríguez Escudero and Jorge Martínez Luciano indicated that the Biden administration contradicts itself by indicating that it is up to Congress to decide Puerto Rico's access to federal programs, under the territorial clause, and at the same time claiming that ISS can dislocate the island's autonomy. He warned that "Congress drastically reduced the scope of Puerto Rico's self-government by approving Promesa".
The House argument added that it is obvious that access to SSI is denied to Puerto Ricans from the Island and "in general the persons residing in Puerto Rico are Puerto Rican nationals.
The intervention of the Puerto Rico Senate and House of Representatives is in addition to other appeals that have been filed in the Vaello Madero case, including the administration of Governor Pierluisi, the resident commissioner in Washington, Jenniffer González, U.S. labor unions, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the elected delegates to lobby for statehood, the group Diálogo por Puerto Rico and the American Bar Association, Latino Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), among others.
Meanwhile, the six delegates elected to lobby for statehood for Puerto Rico also submitted a written argument asserting that "excluding citizens who meet SSI criteria simply because they reside in Puerto Rico and are therefore politically powerless and readily identifiable as citizens of mixed race and Hispanic heritage violates the Fifth Amendment" of the U.S. Constitution.
The brief of the six delegates - Ricardo Rosselló Nevares, Melinda Romero Donelly, Roberto Lefranc Fortuño, Maria Meléndez Altieri, Elizabeth Torres and Zoraida Buxó - is signed by attorney John Nevares.
The group Diálogo por Puerto Rico, for its part, also asserted that the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals was correct in determining that excluding Puerto Rico from SSI violates the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It also maintained that in Vaello Madero's case, it also violates his constitutional right to travel and relocate to Puerto Rico.
"Congress may have the power to dispose of and make all necessary rules and regulations with respect to territory or other property belonging to the United States under Article IV, Section 3, but in the process of doing so, Congress may not affect the fundamental rights, privileges and immunities of United States persons and citizens residing in the body politic known as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, including the fundamental right not to be deprived and deprived of life, liberty or property and guarantees of equal protection," stated the brief signed by attorney Jesús Rabell Méndez.
Among the members of Diálogo por Puerto Rico are former Secretary of State Antonio Colorado, former Representative José Varela, former Secretary of the Treasury Juan Agosto Alicea, poet Elsa Tío and attorney Anibelle Sloan.
The friend-of-the-court appeal by Latino Justice, which was created as the Puerto Rico Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Kasowitz File also urged the federal government to discard the Insular Cases doctrine and the disparate treatment of residents of the territories.
"By denying this (SSI) benefit to 3.2 million Puerto Ricans residing on the island, Congress has created a two-tiered system of citizenship: those who are entitled to all the legal benefits and constitutional protections of this country and second-class citizens, Puerto Ricans, who are granted some, but not others, only because of their race and ethnicity," said Lourdes Rosado, president of Latino Justice.