Supreme Court to take up immigration case

This week the U.S. Supreme Court rejected hearing certain cases but also decided to accept other lawsuits. One of these cases could affect gender and immigration policy.

The case of Flores-Villar v. United States examines what happens to a child who is born outside the U.S. to one parent who is a citizen while the other is not. Attorneys for Mexican-born Ruben Flores-Villar claimed that he was unfairly rejected for citizenship while trying to avoid deportation. The details of the case provide an interesting look at a seemingly odd caveat of U.S. immigration law:

The law, since amended, allowed fathers to transmit citizenship to their children only if the fathers had lived in the United States before the child was born for a total of 10 years, five of them after age 14. Mothers were required to have lived in the United States for a year before their child was born. (The amended law kept the general system but shortened the residency requirement for fathers.)

Mr. Flores-Villar’s father was 16 when his son was born, making it impossible for him to fulfill the part of the law requiring five years of residency after age 14.

Mr. Flores-Villar argued that the differing treatments violated equal protection principles. The Supreme Court has said that sex-based classifications are permissible only if they serve important governmental goals and are substantially related to achieving those goals.

Thus far lower federal courts have rejected Flores-Villar’s arguments while a 2001 high court ruling upheld “different requirements for a child's acquisition of citizenship depending upon whether the citizen parent is the mother or the father.”

Image- BBC News
Online Sources- Oyez, Los Angeles Times, New York Times