A dogged attorney from Puerto Rico who has been fighting for years to get his homeland five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives says he is as close as ever to victory after a decision by a federal appeals court that could allow his arguments to move forward.
“It recognizes the merits of our claim, and they found that what I said was right,” said Gregorio Igartua, the attorney who brought the suit. “This is the closest we have been to having representation. We are American citizens, and we deserve this right.”
A three-judge panel of the Boston-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Wednesday agreed to have the full court decide whether Igartua’s claim should be decided by a lower court in Puerto Rico. If the full panel of judges sides withIgartua, he will be able to argue that Puerto Ricans have been unconstitutionally deprived of representation.
Circuit Judge Kermit V. Lipez called Igartua’s crusade “laudable” in his 24-page decision, and said that in the past, the court “failed to appreciate the strength” of Igartua’s claim that his case should be heard.
“I am very excited, yes. I have been working on this for 25 years for not a penny,” Igartua said. “This is my apostolic work for Puerto Rico.”
The case was decided by the First Circuit because Massachusetts and Puerto Rico share jurisdiction.
Igartua initially brought the case in 2014, arguing that the United States had deprived the insular territory of its constitutional rights by not allowing it to have appropriate representation in Washington, D.C. Currently, Puerto Rico is represented by a non-voting resident commissioner in the House of Representatives.
“The United States is responsible for violations of their rights to elect five Representatives to the US House of Representatives,” Igartua wrote. “Plaintiffs, unlike residents elsewhere in the United States, have no meaningful representation in the Federal House of Representatives, and are therefore denied effective participation in the National Legislature.”
Attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice have fought back and argued that Igartua’s claims should be tossed. U.S. District Court Judge Jay A. Garcia-Gregory agreed, ruling that prior court decisions barred the case.
“Since the text of the Constitution has not been amended, Puerto Rico’s political status has not changed, and the relevant jurisprudence continues to be the same, it follows that a contrary result in this case is foreclosed by this Circuit’s precedent,” he wrote last year.
But this week’s decision breathes new life into the case, and Igartua said he’s ready to keep his decades-old fight alive.
“You need three things to win a case: You have to have a right, you have to know how to present that right to the court, and then you need a court that will hear you,” he said.
“I had the first two, and now I have the third.”
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