Residents of Puerto Rico not eligible for SSI says the Supreme Court

Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens -- except when Congress decides to discriminate against residents of the island territory. That's the effective content of a ruling last week that Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico cannot participate in the federal program called Supplemental Security Income, which provides benefits to older, disabled and blind Americans. The program is available in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to all citizens.

It's no wonder that Puerto Ricans have been and remain conflicted about whether to seek to have their island become a U.S. state. When U.S. expansion across the continent meant mostly white settlers dispossessing the native inhabitants, it was taken for granted that the new lands would eventually become states. But a land seized from Spain's collapsing empire in 1898 presented a new situation. Would the U.S. be willing to absorb a Spanish-speaking colony as an equal part of the whole?

At best, only half-heartedly. Though Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, what democracy the island enjoys has come in fits and starts. Like our other quasi-colony, the District of Colombia, Congress can and does meddle quite directly in local affairs. 

Puerto Ricans' exclusion from SSI seems a gratuitous insult. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose family moved to the mainland from Puerto Rico, was the only dissenter:

“In my view, there is no rational basis for Congress to treat needy citizens living anywhere in the United States so differently from others. To hold otherwise, as the Court does, is irrational and antithetical to the very nature of the SSI program and the equal protection of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution. I respectfully dissent.”

The Biden administration did include extending SSI to U.S. territories in its omnibus "Build Back Better" bill -- now apparently hopelessly stuck in the Senate.