Whether Puerto Rico enjoys the same immunity from lawsuits that U.S. states have was considered by the Supreme Court on Jan. 11 in a battle over media access to internal documents of a governmental body.
The hearing came after a recent push by congressional Democrats for a statehood referendum in Puerto Rico failed in the last Congress. In December 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the proposed Puerto Rico Status Act but it died because the Senate hadn’t yet considered it when the old Congress wrapped up.