The case of Tuaua vs the United States has been filed with the US Supreme Court.
Does the Citizenship Clause entitle persons born in American Samoa, a U.S. territory for more than a century, to birthright citizenship, is the fundamental question posed in the petition filed for certiorari today by prominent Supreme Court attorney Theodore B. Olson on behalf of a group of passport-holding Americans denied recognition as U.S. citizens because they were born in American Samoa.
Tuaua v. United States makes the case that Congress cannot legislate an exception to the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to exclude persons born on U.S. soil, whether born in a state or territory.
Leneuoti Tuaua, lead plaintiff in in the case states, “My passport says I am a U.S. national, but not a U.S. citizen. As someone born on U.S. soil who signed up for the draft during the Vietnam War, my family should not be treated as second-class Americans. I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree the Constitution does not allow Congress to create two separate classes of Americans.”
Three of the five Tuaua plaintiffs are veterans; American Samoa has among the highest rates of U.S. military service in the nation, with casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan more than seven times the national average.
Mr. Olson says the text and history of the Citizenship Clause definitively show that the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship applies in states and territories alike.”
In 2008, Olson wrote a letter with Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe defending the eligibility of John McCain to run for President as a “natural-born citizen” based on his birth in a U.S. possession, among other reasons.
Olson said, “We hope that the Supreme Court will take the case to once again make clear that Congress has no power to turn off or redefine the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.”
A decision by the Supreme Court on whether it will take up the case is expected by the end of the Term, which ends in June.
