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Sessions v. Morales-Santana

Supreme Court of the United States · 2017 · Constitutional Law

Constitutional LawEqual ProtectionCitizenshipGender DiscriminationFifth Amendmentequal protectiongender classificationcitizenship at birth

Facts

At the time relevant to Morales-Santana's birth abroad in 1962, 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a)(7) required a citizen parent to have ten years of physical presence in the United States, at least five after age fourteen, and § 1409(a) applied that rule to unwed citizen fathers. Section 1409(c), however, allowed an unwed citizen mother to transmit citizenship after only one year of continuous prior physical presence. Morales-Santana's father was a U.S. citizen from Puerto Rico but left Puerto Rico 20 days before he would have satisfied the post-age-14 requirement, though he later accepted parental responsibility for Morales-Santana. Facing removal, Morales-Santana claimed that if his citizen parent had been his mother rather than his father, he would have acquired citizenship at birth.

Issue

Does the INA's different physical-presence requirement for unwed citizen mothers and unwed citizen fathers violate the equal protection guarantee implicit in the Fifth Amendment? If so, is the proper remedy to extend the one-year exception for unwed mothers to unwed fathers, or instead to apply the longer general rule prospectively?

Rule

A law that differentiates on the basis of the sex of the qualifying parent is a gender-based classification subject to heightened scrutiny and must be supported by an exceedingly persuasive justification, meaning it must serve important governmental objectives and the discriminatory means employed must be substantially related to those objectives. When such a statute is underinclusive, the remedy depends on legislative intent: a court may either extend the benefit or nullify the exception, and must choose the result the legislature likely would have preferred.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

Congress enacts a statute governing citizenship at birth for children born in Toronto to one U.S.-citizen parent and one Canadian parent. The law requires an unwed citizen father to have lived in the United States for five years before the child's birth, but requires an unwed citizen mother to have lived in the United States for only one continuous year. Daniel Price, born abroad to an unwed U.S.-citizen father who misses the five-year mark by two months, challenges the law.

What is the strongest constitutional analysis of the different residency rules?

Explanation. A statute prescribing one rule for unwed mothers and another for unwed fathers classifies on the basis of the sex of the qualifying parent. Under the Fifth Amendment's equal protection component, that triggers heightened scrutiny: the government must provide an exceedingly persuasive justification, showing important objectives and a substantial relation between those objectives and the discriminatory means. The majority rejected the idea that such a citizenship-at-birth rule gets mere rational-basis review simply because it concerns nationality.