High court rules Congress can exclude Puerto Ricans from aid program

[AZProgressive]

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Congress may continue excluding residents of Puerto Rico from a program that aids low-income disabled and blind people.

The decision was 8 to 1, the lone dissenter being Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose parents were born on the island.

President Biden’s administration, like the Trump administration before it, defended Congress’s right to exclude residents of Puerto Rico from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program without violating the Constitution’s promise of equal protection. But the president has called for the law to be changed.

The exclusion means about 300,000 people on the island who would qualify for the benefit cannot receive it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/21/supreme-court-puerto-rico-ssi/

[marie999]

1. How do we get those 300,000 people to the mainland?

[gladium et scutum]

2. Why?

A Democratic President and a Democratic controlled Congress can change the law if they wish to.

[marie999]

3. Can it be done by a simple majority in the Senate?

[In It to Win It]

4. If they were willing to change the rules, sure

But very unlikely

[gladium et scutum]

5. I do not see why

the pubs would oppose cutting Puerto Rico loose to form their own country. Now if the issue was Puerto Rico statehood. I could see them raising hell.