Facts
- Luis Ramón Morales-Santana was born in 1962 in the Dominican Republic to a Dominican mother and a U.S.-citizen father who was unmarried to the mother.
- At the time, the INA imposed different physical-presence requirements for transmitting citizenship to children born abroad based on the citizen parent’s sex and marital status.
- For children born abroad to married parents (one citizen, one noncitizen), the citizen parent generally needed 10 years’ U.S. physical presence, at least 5 after age 14.
- For children born abroad out of wedlock to a U.S.-citizen mother, the INA required only 1 year of continuous U.S. presence at any time before birth.
- For children born abroad out of wedlock to a U.S.-citizen father, the INA applied the longer physical-presence requirement rather than the 1-year rule.
- Morales-Santana’s father left U.S. territory 20 days before his nineteenth birthday and therefore fell 20 days short of the required post-14 physical presence.
- Morales-Santana moved to the United States at age 13 and lived there for decades.
- After criminal convictions, the government initiated removal proceedings, treating him as a noncitizen; he claimed derivative citizenship and argued the sex-based distinction violated equal protection.
Issues
- Whether the INA’s different physical-presence requirements for unwed citizen mothers versus unwed citizen fathers transmitting citizenship to foreign-born children violate the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
- If unconstitutional, whether the proper remedy is to extend the more favorable 1-year rule to unwed fathers or instead apply the longer physical-presence requirement to all unmarried parents.
Decision
- The Court held that the INA’s sex-based differential physical-presence requirements for unwed mothers and unwed fathers violated equal protection.
- The Court declined to extend the favorable 1-year rule to fathers; instead, it invalidated the exception for unwed mothers going forward and required application of the longer physical-presence rule to all unmarried citizen parents pending congressional action.
- Because Morales-Santana’s father did not satisfy the longer requirement, Morales-Santana did not obtain citizenship.
- The Court affirmed the constitutional holding but reversed the remedial determination that had granted Morales-Santana citizenship.
Legal Principles
- Sex-based classifications are subject to heightened scrutiny and require an exceedingly persuasive justification; the government must show important objectives and a substantial relation between the classification and those objectives.
- A gender line resting on generalized assumptions about mothers’ and fathers’ parental roles cannot justify disparate citizenship-transmission requirements.
- When a statutory benefit is constitutionally invalid due to unequal treatment, a court may cure the defect by withdrawing the preferential treatment rather than extending it, depending on statutory structure and likely legislative choice.
- A litigant may have third-party standing to assert an equal-protection claim on behalf of a closely related person who cannot sue, where the litigant suffers direct injury and interests are aligned.
Conclusion
The Court ruled that the INA’s more lenient physical-presence requirement for unwed citizen mothers, compared to unwed citizen fathers, was unconstitutional sex discrimination, but remedied the violation by applying the longer physical-presence requirement uniformly to unmarried parents, leaving Morales-Santana without derivative citizenship.