Quote:
Originally Posted by albionmoonlight
So a lot depends on how committed Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and New Justice X are to textualism, and how much they are committed to GOP-always-wins-ism.
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Gorsuch has shown he will stand with textualism even when it gives a liberal win (LGBTQ+ discrimination). Thomas is not a textualist - so he'll go with 'intent'. The question will be Roberts and Kavanaugh.
So there are two ways it could go about. If a federal area is limited to the Mall area, they can say that alone is what the Constitution text mandates, so a new state of formerly federal district would be Constitutional. Or they could say that Congress can give the residential areas back to Maryland and Virginia (as Congress did with Arlington) but not create a state around the federal area.