A variety of proposals were made in the 110 th Congress regarding granting the Delegate of the District of Columbia voting rights in the House. On January 19, 2007, Representative Hoyer introduced H.Res. 78 , which proposed House Rule changes allowing the District of Columbia delegate (in addition to the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico and the delegates from American Samoa, Guam, and the Virgin Islands) to vote in the Committee of the Whole, subject to a revote in the full House if such votes proved decisive. H.Res. 78 was approved by the House on January 24, 2007. Then, on April 19, 2007, Congress passed a bill introduced by Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, H.R. 1905 , the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007, which would have granted the District a voting representative in the full House. A similar bill, S. 1257 , was considered by the Senate on September 18 of that year, but a motion to invoke cloture failed by a vote of 57-42. Similar bills to give the Delegate a vote in the Full House— H.R. 157 and S. 160 —have been introduced in the 111 th Congress. S. 160 was approved by the Senate on February 26, 2009, by a vote of 61-37. Under the proposals relating to the full House, the House would be expanded by two Members to a total of 437 Members, and the first of these two positions would be allocated to create a voting Member representing the District of Columbia. Although it is generally accepted that the Delegate for the District of Columbia could be given a vote in the House of Representatives by constitutional amendment, questions have been raised whether such a result can be achieved by statute. H.R. 157 , for instance, provides the following: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the District of Columbia shall be considered a Congressional district for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives." That proposal also provides that regardless of existing federal law regarding apportionment, "the District of Columbia may not receive more than one member under any reapportionment of members." The proposal also contains a non-severability clause, so that if a provision of the act is held unconstitutional, the remaining provisions of H.R. 157 would be treated as invalid. In contrast, H.Res. 78 only granted the District of Columbia delegate a vote in the Committee of the Whole, a procedural posture of the full House which is invoked to speed up floor action. Specifically, the resolution amends House Rule III, cl. 3(a) to provide that "in a Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, the Resident Commissioner to the United States from Puerto Rico and each Delegate to the House shall possess the same powers and privileges as Members of the House." An additional change to the House Rules, however, limited the effect of this voting power when it would be decisive. H.Res. 78 also amended House Rule XVIII, cl. 6 to provide that "whenever a recorded vote on any question has been decided by a margin within which the votes cast by the Delegates and the Resident Commissioner have been decisive, the Committee of the Whole shall automatically rise and the Speaker shall put that question de novo without intervening debate or other business. Upon the announcement of the vote on that question, the Committee of the Whole shall resume its sitting without intervening motion." Both of these provisions of H.Res. 78 are similar to amendments to the House Rules that were in effect during the 103 rd Congress. Residents of the District of Columbia have never had more than limited representation in Congress. Over the years, however, efforts have been made to amend the Constitution so that the District would be treated as a state for purposes of voting representation. For instance, in 1978, H.J.Res. 554 was approved by two-thirds of both the House and the Senate, and was sent to the states. The text of the proposed constitutional amendment provided, in part, that "[f]or purposes of representation in the Congress, election of the President and Vice President, and Article V of this Constitution, [ ] the District constituting the seat of government of the United States shall be treated as though it were a State." The Amendment was ratified by 16 states, but expired in 1985 without winning the support of the requisite 38 states. Since the expiration of this proposed Amendment, a variety of other proposals have been made to give the District of Columbia representation in the full House. In general, these proposals would avoid the more procedurally difficult route of amending the Constitution, but would be implemented by statute. Thus, for instance, bills were introduced and considered which would have (1) granted statehood to the non-federal portion of the District; (2) retroceded the non-federal portion of the District to the State of Maryland; and (3) allowed District residents to vote in Maryland for their representatives to the Senate and House. Efforts to pass these bills have been unsuccessful, with some arguing that these approaches raise constitutional and/or policy concerns. Unlike the proposals cited above, H.R. 157 uses language similar to that found in the proposed constitutional amendment, but would instead grant the District of Columbia a voting member in the House by statute. As noted above, H.J.Res. 554 would have provided by constitutional amendment that the District of Columbia be treated as a state for purposes of representation in the House and Senate, the election of the President and Vice President, and ratification of amendments of the Constitution. H.R. 157 , is more limited, in that it would only provide that the District of Columbia be treated as a state for purposes of representation in the House. Nonetheless, the question is raised as to whether such representation can be achieved without a constitutional amendment. As noted previously, a resolution similar to the H.Res. 78 was adopted in the 103 rd Congress. It was soon challenged, but it was upheld at both the District Court and the Court of Appeals level. It would appear, however, that the proposal was upheld primarily because of the provision calling for a revote when the vote of the delegates or residents was decisive in the Committee of the Whole. As Congress has never granted the Delegate from the District of Columbia a vote in the full House or Senate, the constitutionality of such legislation has not been before the courts. The question of whether the District of Columbia should be considered a state for purposes of having a vote in the House of Representatives, however, was considered by a three-judge panel of the United States District Court of the District of Columbia in the case of Adams v. Clinton . In Adams , the panel examined the issue of whether failure to provide congressional representation for the District of Columbia violated the Equal Protection Clause. In doing so, it discussed extensively whether the Constitution, as it stands today, allows such representation. The court began with a textual analysis of the Constitution. Article I, § 2, clause 1 of the Constitution, the "House Representation Clause," provides [t]he House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. The court noted that, while the phrase "people of the several States" could be read as meaning all the people of the "United States," that the use of the phrase later in the clause and throughout the article makes clear that the right to representation in Congress is limited to states. This conclusion has been consistently reached by a variety of other courts, and is supported by most, though not all, commentators. The plaintiffs in Adams v. Clinton , however, suggested that even if the District of Columbia is not strictly a "state" under Article I, § 2, clause 1, that the citizens of the United States could still have representation in Congress. The plaintiffs in Adams made two arguments: (1) that the District of Columbia, although not technically a state under the Constitution, should be treated as one for voting purposes or (2) that District citizens should be allowed to vote in the State of Maryland, based on their "residual" citizenship in that state. The first argument was based primarily on cases where the Supreme Court has found that the District of Columbia was subject to various constitutional provisions despite the fact that such provisions were textually limited to "states." The second argument is primarily based on the fact that residents of the land ceded by Maryland continued to vote in Maryland elections during the period between the act of July 16, 1790, by which Virginia and Maryland ceded lands to Congress for formation of the District, and the Organic Act of 1801, under which Congress assumed jurisdiction and provided for the government of the District. Whether the District of Columbia can be considered a "state" within the meaning of a particular constitutional or statutory provision appears to depend upon the character and aim of the specific provision involved. Accordingly, the court in Adams examined the Constitution's language, history, and relevant judicial precedents to determine whether the Constitution allowed for areas which were not states to have representatives in the House. The court determined that a finding that the District of Columbia was a state for purposes of congressional representation was not consistent with any of these criteria. First, the court indicated that construing the term "state" to include the "District of Columbia" for purposes of representation would lead to many incongruities in other parts of the Constitution. One of several examples that the court noted was that Article I requires that voters in House elections "have the Qualifications requisite for the Electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature." The District, as pointed out by the court, did not have a legislature until home rule was passed in 1973, so this rule would have been ineffectual for most of the District's history.