Lynch v. Morales-Santana
Issues
- Did Congress violate the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection when it passed a law that made it more difficult for out-of-wedlock, foreign-born children with United States-citizen fathers to inherit United States citizenship than for those with United States-citizen mothers?
- Is a federal appellate court allowed to grant citizenship when it lacks express authority to do so?
When a child with one United States-citizen parent is born abroad and out of wedlock, that child may or may not inherit United States citizenship. One of the factors that determines the child’s citizenship is whether the United States-citizen parent is the child’s mother or father. In 1958, Congress passed a law that placed different physical-presence requirements on the father than on the mother, whereby the father must have lived in the United States for at least ten years before the child’s birth, while the mother must have lived in the United States for only one continuous year. Luis Ramon Morales-Santana argues that this distinction unjustifiably discriminates on the basis of gender and therefore violates the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch argues that this distinction is not actually based on gender, but on the legal realities inherent in out-of-wedlock births, and is constitutional. The outcome of this case will affect the legal criteria bearing upon a foreign-born child’s ability to inherit United States citizenship.
Questions as Framed for the Court by the Parties
In order for a United States citizen who has a child abroad with a non-U.S. citizen to transmit his or her citizenship to the foreign-born child, the U.S.-citizen parent must have been physically present in the United States for a particular period of time prior to the child's birth.
The questions presented are:
- Whether Congress's decision to impose a different physical-presence requirement on unwed citizen mothers of foreign-born children than on other citizen parents of foreign-born children through 8 U.S.C. 1401 and 1409 (1958) violates the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection.
- Whether the court of appeals erred in conferring U.S. citizenship on respondent, in the absence of any express statutory authority to do so.
In 1962, Luis Ramon Morales-Santana was born in the Dominican Republic to unmarried parents. See Morales-Santana v. Lynch, 804 F.3d 521, 524 (2nd Cir. 2015). At the time of Morales-Santana’s birth, his mother was a citizen of the Dominican Republic, and his father was a citizen of the United States.
Edited by
Additional Resources
- Christina Beck, Supreme Court Citizenship Case: Should the Genders of Parents’ Matter?, The Christian Science Monitor (June 28, 2016).
- Maggie Murphy, Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Birthright Citizenship Case, Lexology (June 28, 2016).
- Mark Sherman, Supreme Court Will Review Unusual Citizenship Law, The Gazette (June 28, 2016).