Congress has the authority to extend procedural rights to territories.
Valcarcel 18 { Tamara Valcarcel (J.D. Candidate). Inter American University of Puerto Rico School of Law. Published May 2018, Accessed July 2, 2023. www.derecho.inter.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/INTERPRETING-THE-FOURTEENTH-AMENDMENT-AND-HOW-IT-EXTENDS-TO-UNINCORPORATED-TERRITORIES-SUCH-AS-PUERTO-RICO.pdf.]–CPSW–TW
The first, and most simplistic option, is for Congress simply to pass legislation that extends the “procedural” rights to the territories.175 This would entail the least change to the current system, and would not extend citizenship to those thought “unfit” to receive it.176 As the Court has pointed out in the Insular Cases, Congress has always retained the right to extend the protections of the Bill of Rights to the territories.177 Although these rights have never actually been implicitly extended by Congress, insular cases such as Balzac v. Porto Rico, have concluded that the creation of a Bill of Rights for Puerto Rico in the Jones Act justifies the conclusion that the federal Bill of Rights does not apply.178 Passing legislation that unambiguously extends procedural rights to territories would be the easiest and least controversial solution to apply.179 It would be the easiest solution to apply since it would only require Congress enacting new legislation that would clearly extend constitutional Fourteenth Amendment provisions to Puerto Rico.