On June 9th, 2016, two things happened: the Supreme Court made a decision in the case of Puerto Rico vs. Sanchez-Valle and the U.S. House of Representatives passed the PROMESA bill (H.R. 5278) by a 297-127 vote. In the video above, George Laws Garcia asks, “What happens when people are told they have self-determination but the most important decisions about their future are still made by someone else?” The events of June 2016 were Puerto Rico’s wake-up call.
Puerto Rico vs. Sanchez-Valle
The Supreme Court decided Sanchez-Valle a case on the illegal sale of weapons that really centered on the ideas of double jeopardy and dual sovereignty.
The Supreme Court essentially said that the power of Puerto Rico’s government was delegated to it by Congress under the Territory Clause, and did not come from the people of Puerto Rico, as the powers of states do. As Laws Garcia explains, “The ruling directly challenged the long-promoted idea that Puerto Rico had evolved into a fully autonomous political entity, a so-called ‘commonwealth’ with sovereignty separate from the federal government.”
PROMESA
A bill creating a Financial Oversight and Management Board, an unelected group appointed by the federal government, passed in the House on June 9th, 2016, and became law on June 30th. This board was designed to help Puerto Rico sort out debt that then-governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla had declared “unpayable.” The board was able to override laws made by the territory’s government and to use extraordinary powers to direct the actions of the elected government of the Island.
The reality of territory status
These two actions on the part of the federal government were shocking to many Puerto Ricans and to many other Americans as well. Governor Garcia Padilla insisted that Puerto Rico was “not a mere territory” and Sen. Bernie Sanders called the board “colonial masters.” There were protests in the streets, carrying banners saying, “The problem is not the junta, it’s the colony.” Objections have continued for the decade the board has been in place. President Trump eviscerated the board in 2025, and Members of Congress from multiple states have called for the end of the board.
But, as Laws Garcia says in the video, the problem is bigger than either of the decisions on their own. More than 3 million U.S. citizens live in Puerto Rico. They cannot vote in presidential elections. they have no senators and no voting Members of Congress. They can, by law, be treated differently from citizens living in states. They do not have the full protection of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. citizenship of people born in Puerto Rico is not even guaranteed under the 14th amendment; Congress could rescind it.
This is not equality. This is not justice. But it is what it means to be a territory. The New York Times reported, on the day PROMESA became law, that “[T]he Popular Democrats ha[ve] for decades promoted Puerto Rico’s continued status as a United States territory. But no one here uses that term. Here, Puerto Rico is said to be a ‘free associated state’ of the United States, and the word ‘territory’ is considered pejorative. ‘Free associated state’ is not defined in the relevant laws and seems to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean.”
Puerto Rico is a territory belonging to the United States. Under the Territory Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the power to make all the rules for the Island. That is not democracy. Reach out to your legislators and make sure they understand that Puerto Rico needs and deserves to be a state.
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