{"id":216738,"date":"2015-12-16T04:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T18:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=216738"},"modified":"2015-12-16T04:00:17","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T18:00:17","slug":"high-court-review-sought-for-americans-denied-recognition-as-us-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/high-court-review-sought-for-americans-denied-recognition-as-us-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"High court review sought for Americans denied recognition as US citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-216738 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-medium'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon '>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/high-court-review-sought-for-americans-denied-recognition-as-us-citizens\/us-citizens-2\/'>US-citizens-2<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<figcaption class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-216740'>\n\t\t\t\tLoa Pele Faletogo, president of the L.A.-based Samoan Federation of America, is also a plaintiff in the case Tuaua v. United States. (Contributed Photo)\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon '>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/high-court-review-sought-for-americans-denied-recognition-as-us-citizens\/us-citizens-1\/'>US-citizens-1<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<figcaption class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-216739'>\n\t\t\t\tLeneuoti Tuaua, lead plaintiff in Tuaua v. United States, stands in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. (Contributed Photo)\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Does Congress have the power to switch the Constitution\u2019s guarantee of birthright citizenship on and off in U.S. territories?<\/p>\n<p>This is one of the questions a group of Americans denied recognition as U.S. citizens because they were born in American Samoa plan to ask the Supreme Court when they file their petition for certiorari in the coming weeks. Joining them in Tuaua v. United States\u00a0to make the case that the Constitution\u203as guarantee of birthright citizenship cannot be restricted by Congress is prominent Supreme Court attorney Theodore B. Olson, who has argued over 60 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Earlier today, Olson filed a motion to the court on behalf of the Tuaua petitioners requesting a 30-day extension to file a petition for certiorari seeking Supreme Court review of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit\u2019s June decision holding that birthright citizenship is not a \u201cfundamental right\u201d in U.S. territories. The motion, which includes an overview of the arguments and issues in the case, is available here.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am a proud, passport-carrying American, was born on U.S. soil, and signed up for the draft during the Vietnam War\u2014yet the federal government will not recognize me as a U.S. citizen. I know that\u2019s wrong, and I hope the Supreme Court will agree it\u2019s also unconstitutional,\u201d said Leneuoti Tuaua, lead plaintiff in Tuaua v. United States.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe text and history of the citizenship clause definitively show that the Constitution\u2019s guarantee of birthright citizenship applies in states and territories alike,\u201d said Olson, who in 2008 wrote a letter with Harvard professor Laurence Tribe defending the eligibility of John McCain to run for President as a \u201cnatural-born citizen\u201d based on his birth in a U.S. possession, among other reasons.\u00a0\u201cWe 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\u2019s guarantee of birthright citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTheodore Olson has a record of standing up for constitutional rights.\u00a0We are thrilled to have his experience and expertise as we work to help our clients have their day before the Supreme Court,\u201d said Neil Weare, who argued the case before the D.C. Circuit, and is president and founder of We the People Project, a non-profit organization that advocates for equal rights and representation for the over 4 million Americans living in U.S. territories.<\/p>\n<p>The D.C. Circuit\u2019s June opinion, authored by Judge Janice Rogers Brown and joined by Senior Judges Laurence H. Silberman and David B. Sentelle, held that the meaning of the Citizenship Clause was \u201cambiguous\u201d as to whether its guarantee of birthright citizenship applied in overseas U.S. territories. The panel\u2019s opinion also broadly expanded the reach of the Insular Cases, a series of controversial decisions that have been criticized by First Circuit Judge Juan Torruella as creating a doctrine of \u201cseparate and unequal\u201d status for residents of U.S. territories. In doing so, it held that rights recognized as \u201cfundamental\u201d in other parts of the United States need not be recognized as \u201cfundamental\u201d in so-called \u201cunincorporated\u201d U.S. territories, a controversial and unprecedented classification created by the Supreme Court at the turn of the 20th century to apply to newly acquired overseas territories.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFundamental constitutional rights should mean the same thing throughout the United States, whether one lives in a state, territory, or the District of Columbia,\u201d Weare said.<\/p>\n<p>The Tuaua case and the controversial Insular Cases doctrine were examined in a recently published book, Reconsidering the Insular Cases, which is the result of a major conference sponsored last year at Harvard Law School.<\/p>\n<p>As discussed at Harvard, the Supreme Court explained in 2008 that although \u201c[t]he Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory,\u201d it does not give them \u201cthe power to decide when and where its terms apply.\u201d The court\u2019s decision in Boumediene v. Bush also rejected the idea that \u201cthe political branches have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will,\u201d explaining that \u201c[i]t may well be that over time the ties between the United States and any of its territories strengthen in ways that are of constitutional significance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe D.C. Circuit\u2019s decision is in tension with recent Supreme Court pronouncements that Congress cannot pick and choose which constitutional rights apply in U.S. territories today. Tuaua provides the court an opportunity to review these important constitutional questions, which affect the lives of more than 4 million Americans who live in U.S. territories,\u201d Olson said.<\/p>\n<p>A recent mini-documentary examined the impact the inferior status of \u201cnon-citizen national\u201d status has had on the American Samoan community in Los Angeles\u2014the largest in the continental United States\u2014who are denied the right to vote and even access to certain jobs, even as they are expected to pay the same taxes as other Americans. Loa Pele Faletogo, president of the L.A.-based Samoan Federation of America, a plaintiff in the case, explained, \u201cWe hope the Supreme Court will recognize our right to citizenship. Otherwise the only way thousands of American Samoans living in Los Angeles and other communities will be able to vote is to naturalize, which with a nearly $700 fee and a test on English and civics, amounts to a poll tax and literacy test all rolled into one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>HBO\u2019s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver also examined this injustice in a segment that was cited by the Ninth Circuit for its sharp critique of any continued reliance on the Insular Cases to deny equal rights in U.S. territories.<\/p>\n<p>If plaintiffs\u2019 motion is granted, their petition for certiorari will be due on Monday, Feb. 1, 2016. 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. <em><strong>(We the People)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Does Congress have the power to switch the Constitution\u2019s guarantee of birthright citizenship on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":216740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[7070,50,139,57],"class_list":["post-216738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pacific","tag-citizenship-clause","tag-power","tag-supreme-court","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}