Kristin Collins and Linda K. Kerber: Sexing Citizenship
[Kristin Collins is a law professor at Boston University, and is the principal author of an amicus brief filed on behalf of Ruben Flores-Villar. Linda K. Kerber is a history professor at the University of Iowa and a signatory of the amicus brief. She is also the author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship.]
Tomorrow the Supreme Court will consider whether American fathers have the same rights as American mothers to ensure that their children are citizens at birth. Under the 14th Amendment, "all persons born in the United States are ... citizens of the United States." But the status of children born to American parents beyond U.S. borders is less certain. In the case Flores-Villar v. United States, the Justice Department is defending the constitutionality of a law that treats some of these children differently depending on whether their mother or their father is a citizen. The government relies on a speculative reading of the historical record and dismisses clear evidence that such laws perpetuate centuries-old stereotypes regarding men's and women's roles as parents. The court should strike down the statute and its sorely out-of-date approach....
...Flores-Villar isn't a case about keeping out illegal immigrants. It is a case about the rights of American mothers and fathers to equal protection of the law. It is also about a child's "right to a nationality," a fundamental principle of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "Citizenship is not a license that expires on misbehavior," the Supreme Court forthrightly stated more than 50 years ago. Nor should one's citizenship status turn on the happenstance of whether one's citizen parent is a mother or a father. Either parent can take responsibility for raising a child. That's the modern truth the Supreme Court should embrace and that our citizenship laws should reflect.
Read entire article at Slate
Tomorrow the Supreme Court will consider whether American fathers have the same rights as American mothers to ensure that their children are citizens at birth. Under the 14th Amendment, "all persons born in the United States are ... citizens of the United States." But the status of children born to American parents beyond U.S. borders is less certain. In the case Flores-Villar v. United States, the Justice Department is defending the constitutionality of a law that treats some of these children differently depending on whether their mother or their father is a citizen. The government relies on a speculative reading of the historical record and dismisses clear evidence that such laws perpetuate centuries-old stereotypes regarding men's and women's roles as parents. The court should strike down the statute and its sorely out-of-date approach....
...Flores-Villar isn't a case about keeping out illegal immigrants. It is a case about the rights of American mothers and fathers to equal protection of the law. It is also about a child's "right to a nationality," a fundamental principle of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "Citizenship is not a license that expires on misbehavior," the Supreme Court forthrightly stated more than 50 years ago. Nor should one's citizenship status turn on the happenstance of whether one's citizen parent is a mother or a father. Either parent can take responsibility for raising a child. That's the modern truth the Supreme Court should embrace and that our citizenship laws should reflect.