Letter to the Editor: We must move forward with political status plebiscite

By William Parkinson

I want to address, respectfully, the argument for keeping the self-determination vote limited to native inhabitants: that self-determination, as understood in the decolonization context, belongs to the colonized people and is meant to remedy a specific historical wrong.

That argument has moral force, and it has been articulated by advocates and counsel in the Davis litigation. But the Ninth Circuit’s holding places Guam in a bind. So long as the plebiscite is conducted by the government and concerns a public issue, the court has made clear that it must comply with constitutional voting protections.

I respect the conviction of those who continue to advocate for a plebiscite with native inhabitants only. I share the frustration, and yes, I wish the Davis decision had not happened either.

But it did.

In Davis v. Guam, the United States District Court permanently enjoined Guam from conducting a political status plebiscite restricted to “native inhabitants of Guam” and the Ninth Circuit affirmed that result on Fifteenth Amendment grounds.

The Ninth Circuit held that the “native inhabitants of Guam” voting restriction functioned as a proxy for race, and therefore could not stand. Guam sought review at the U.S. Supreme Court, but certiorari was denied on May 4, 2020. We have run out of legal remedies.

We have to face that reality, not because it is comfortable, but because refusing to confront it has real consequences. The decolonization statute as written has been effectively nullified by the court.

And we are now approaching a full decade since the District Court’s 2017 judgment. In those years, there has been no legislative action to reconcile the plebiscite statute with federal law.

That inaction is not inevitable. We have done this before.

When the federal government sued Guam in 2017, alleging that the CHamoru Land Trust program discriminated based on race or national origin under the Fair Housing Act, Guam did not solve the problem by ignoring it. A settlement was filed in 2020, and legislature removed the native inhabitant-based qualifications for the CHamoru Land Trust.

That law passed with little argument and is now the controlling law of the CHamoru Land Trust. 

That is why I introduced legislation to remove the ancestry restriction for the plebiscite and to bring Guam’s process into compliance with the Ninth Circuit’s decision, so that this generation of Guamanians can finally have a lawful pathway to express a preference on our political destiny.

Let me be direct about what this bill is, and what it is not.

It is not a repudiation of CHamoru self-determination advocacy. It is not a dismissal of the historic harms of colonization. It is not a claim that the court’s reasoning was morally satisfying, or that the outcome was what our community deserved.

It is a pragmatic recognition of the legal landscape we are in and an attempt to move forward within it rather than remain trapped in a statute that cannot be implemented as written. This also isn't new, as the last plebiscite Guam had in 1982 was also open to all registered voters.   

So we have a choice. We can keep repeating the same argument in the abstract while remaining in the same place in practice, or we can take the only viable path for a statutory vote and actually let the community speak.

I am asking the public, including those who strongly disagree with this approach, to participate in the process. If you have alternatives for a legal pathway to a plebiscite, let's hear it. Testify. Debate it. Improve it. Challenge it.

Discourse is not a threat to self-determination. It is a necessary condition of it.

If we believe political destiny is worth claiming, then it is worth discussing with honesty. If we believe history matters, then it is worth confronting the present reality that courts have imposed.

And if we believe our children deserve better than another decade of stalemate, then we should move the process forward, lawfully, in our time.

Sen. William Parkinson is a Democratic member of the 38th Guam Legislature.

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