| Afroyim v. Rusk | ||||||
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Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued February 20, 1967 Decided May 29, 1967 |
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| Full case name | Beys Afroyim v. Dean Rusk, Secretary of State | |||||
| Citations | 387 U.S. 253 (more) 87 S.Ct. 1660; 18 L.Ed.2d 757 |
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| Prior history | Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; 361 F.2d 102 | |||||
| Holding | ||||||
| Congress has no power under the Constitution to revoke a person's U.S. citizenship unless he voluntarily renounces it. In particular, citizenship may not be revoked as a consequence of voting in a foreign election. | ||||||
| Court membership | ||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||
| Majority | Black, joined by Warren, Douglas, Brennan, Fortas | |||||
| Dissent | Harlan, joined by Clark, Stewart, White | |||||
| Laws applied | ||||||
| Nationality Act of 1940; U.S. Const. amends. V, XIV | ||||||
Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that citizens of the United States cannot be deprived of their citizenship involuntarily.[1][2] The U.S. government had attempted to revoke the citizenship of Beys Afroyim, a man who had voted in a foreign election after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, but the Supreme Court ruled that Afroyim's right to keep his citizenship was guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In so doing, the Court overruled one of its own precedents, Perez v. Brownell (1958), in which it had upheld loss of citizenship under similar circumstances.
The Afroyim decision opened the way for a wider acceptance of multiple citizenship in United States law.[3] A series of treaties in place between the United States and other nations (the Bancroft Treaties), which had sought to limit dual citizenship following naturalization, were abandoned after the U.S. government concluded Afroyim had rendered them unenforceable. Although some attempts have been made in Congress to lessen the effect of Afroyim and later Supreme Court decisions and State Department policy changes, these efforts have not succeeded.
The impact of Afroyim v. Rusk was narrowed by a later case, Rogers v. Bellei (1971), in which the Court held that the citizenship status of a person born abroad to an American parent was distinguished from that of a person born or naturalized in the United States, and that Congress did have the authority to revoke citizenship in such cases. The specific statute at issue in Rogers v. Bellei—a requirement for a minimum period of U.S. residence which Bellei had failed to satisfy—was repealed by Congress in 1978.
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Contents
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Citizenship in the United States has historically been acquired in one of three ways: by birth in the United States (jus soli, "right of the soil");[4] by birth outside the United States to an American parent (jus sanguinis, "right of the blood");[5] or by immigration to the United States followed by naturalization.[6]
Shortly before the Civil War, the Supreme Court held in Dred Scott v. Sandford[7] that Negro slaves, former slaves, and their descendants were not eligible to be citizens.[8] After the Civil War and the resulting abolition of slavery in the United States, steps were taken to grant citizenship to the freed slaves. Congress first enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which included a clause declaring "all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power" to be citizens.[9] Concerns were soon raised, though, that this provision might be repealed by a later Congress[10] or struck down as unconstitutional by the courts.[11] As a result, when Congress shortly thereafter drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, one of the amendment's many provisions was the Citizenship Clause, which entrenched in the Constitution (and thereby set beyond the future reach of Congress or the courts) a guarantee of citizenship stating that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States".[12]
The Constitution does not specifically deal with loss of United States citizenship. A proposed amendment to the Constitution—the Titles of Nobility Amendment of 1810—would, if ratified, have provided that any United States citizen who accepted any "present, pension, office or emolument" from a foreign country, without the consent of Congress, would "cease to be a citizen of the United States"; however, this amendment was never ratified by a sufficient number of state legislatures and never became a part of the Constitution.[13]
Ever since the affirmation by Congress, in the Expatriation Act of 1868, that individuals had an inherent right to expatriation (giving up of citizenship),[14] it has historically been accepted that certain actions could result in loss of citizenship. This possibility was noted by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 case involving a man born in the United States to Chinese parents. After ruling in this case that Wong was born a U.S. citizen, despite his Chinese ancestry, the Court went on to state that his birthright citizenship "[had] not been lost or taken away by anything happening since his birth."[15]
The Bancroft Treaties were a series of agreements made between the United States and other countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by which the signatories recognized the right of their citizens to adopt a new citizenship by naturalization, and thereby automatically lose their old citizenship. The Bancroft Treaties also provided that a naturalized citizen who returned to live in his country of origin would be deemed to have lost his new citizenship and would automatically reobtain his original citizenship.[16]
A 1907 act of Congress provided for loss of U.S. citizenship as a result of naturalization in a foreign country, the taking of an oath of allegiance to a foreign state, marriage of an American woman to a foreigner, or return by a naturalized U.S. citizen to live in his country of origin for more than two years.[17][18] Portions of this statute were upheld by the Supreme Court in a 1915 case, Mackenzie v. Hare, in which the Court noted that the petitioner's marriage to a British subject was "a condition voluntarily entered into, with notice of the consequences";[19] as well as in a 1950 case, Savorgnan v. United States, involving an American woman who had become an Italian citizen and moved to Italy with her Italian husband.[20][21] The loss-of-citizenship provision affecting naturalized citizens moving abroad, however, was overturned in a 1964 Supreme Court case, Schneider v. Rusk.[22] Attempts were also made to void the citizenship of U.S.-born children who had grown up outside the United States after being taken abroad by their parents, but such efforts were invalidated by Supreme Court rulings in 1939 (Perkins v. Elg)[23] and 1952 (Mandoli v. Acheson).[24]
The Nationality Act of 1940[25] provided for loss of U.S. citizenship based on foreign military or government service, when coupled with citizenship in that foreign country. This statute also mandated loss of citizenship for desertion from the U.S. armed forces, remaining outside the U.S. in order to evade military service during wartime, or voting in a foreign election.[26] The provision calling for loss of citizenship for foreign military service was held by the Supreme Court not to be enforceable without proof that said service had been voluntary, in a 1958 case (Nishikawa v. Dulles);[27] and revocation of citizenship as a punishment for desertion was struck down in another 1958 case (Trop v. Dulles).[28] However, the provision revoking the citizenship of any American who voted in an election in a foreign country was affirmed by the Supreme Court in a 1958 case, Perez v. Brownell,[29] as a legitimate exercise by Congress (under the Necessary and Proper Clause) of its right to regulate foreign affairs and avoid potentially embarrassing diplomatic situations.[30]
Beys Afroyim was a painter, born as Ephraim Bernstein. Various sources state he was born in 1892, 1893, or 1898, and in either Ryki, Poland or Riga, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire).[31][32][33]
In 1912, Afroyim immigrated to the United States, and on June 14, 1926 he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen.[33][34] In 1950, Afroyim moved to Israel[35] and presumably became a citizen of that country.[36] In 1960, following the breakdown of his marriage to Austrian painter Soshana Afroyim, Afroyim decided to return to the United States,[37] but the State Department refused to renew his U.S. passport, ruling that because Afroyim had voted in an Israeli election in 1951, he had lost his U.S. citizenship under section 401(e) of the Nationality Act of 1940 (which mandated revocation of U.S. citizenship for voting "in a political election in a foreign state").[38] A letter certifying Afroyim's loss of citizenship was issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service on January 13, 1961.[33]
Afroyim challenged the revocation of his U.S. citizenship. Initially, Afroyim claimed that he had not in fact voted in Israel's 1951 election, but had entered the polls solely in order to draw sketches of voters casting their ballots. Afroyim's challenge was rejected in administrative proceedings in 1965. He then sued in a federal district court, with his lawyer agreeing to a stipulation that Afroyim had in fact voted in Israel, but arguing that the statute under which this action had resulted in his losing U.S. citizenship was unconstitutional.[37] The lower courts rejected Afroyim's claims, ruling that the question of the statute's validity had been settled by the Supreme Court's 1958 Perez v. Brownell decision.[39]
After losing his case in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,[40] Afroyim asked the Supreme Court to overrule the precedent established in Perez v. Brownell, rule the foreign voting provision of the Nationality Act to be unconstitutional, and rule that he was still a United States citizen. Afroyim's counsel argued that since "neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor any other provision of the Constitution expressly grants Congress the power to take away that citizenship once it has been acquired . . . the only way he could lose his citizenship was by his own voluntary renunciation of it."[34] The Supreme Court agreed to consider Afroyim's case[41] and held oral arguments on February 20, 1967.
The respondent in Afroyim's case—representing the U.S. government—was Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
The Supreme Court ruled in Afroyim's favor in a 5-4 decision issued on May 29, 1967. The opinion of the Court, written by Associate Justice Hugo Black, was a revival of Chief Justice Earl Warren's dissent nine years earlier in Perez v. Brownell.[42] Although Afroyim's legal team had been careful to confine their arguments to the specific issue of voting in foreign elections,[43] the Court went further, holding that "Congress has no power under the Constitution to divest a person of his United States citizenship absent his voluntary renunciation thereof."[44] Specifically discarding the precedent set in the 1958 Perez v. Brownell case,[45][46] the Court rejected the claim that Congress had power to revoke citizenship and said that "no such power can be sustained as an implied attribute of sovereignty". Instead, the justices held that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution defined "a citizenship which a citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it" and which, once acquired, "was not to be shifted, canceled, or diluted at the will of the Federal Government, the States, or any other governmental unit."[47][48]
The Court found support for their view in the history of the proposed Titles of Nobility Amendment, which had sought to revoke the citizenship of any U.S. citizen who accepted a gift or honor from a foreign government (but which was never ratified by the states and never became part of the Constitution).[13] The fact that this 1810 proposal was framed as a constitutional amendment, rather than an ordinary act of Congress, was seen by the Court as showing that, even before the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress did not believe that it had the power to strip U.S. citizenship from anyone.[49] The Court further noted that a proposed 1818 act of Congress would have provided a means of voluntary relinquishment of citizenship, but opponents had argued at the time that Congress had no authority to provide for expatriation.[50]
The minority argued, in a dissent written by Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan II, that Perez v. Brownell had been correctly decided and should not be repudiated;[51] that nothing in the Constitution deprived Congress of the power to revoke a person's U.S. citizenship for good cause;[52][53] and that Congress was within its rights to decide that allowing U.S. citizens to vote in foreign elections ran contrary to the foreign policy interests of the nation and ought to result in loss of citizenship.[54] Examining the materials cited in the opinion of the Court, the dissent argued that they were inconclusive and that some of them had been misread.[50] Harlan predicted that "Until the Court indicates with greater precision what it means by 'assent', today's opinion will surely cause still greater confusion in this area of the law."[55][56]
The statute calling for loss of U.S. citizenship for voting in a foreign election, which the Supreme Court invalidated in Afroyim v. Rusk, was eventually repealed by Congress in 1978.[57] In 1980, the administration of President Jimmy Carter concluded that the Bancroft Treaties (which provided, among other things, for automatic loss of U.S. citizenship upon foreign naturalization of a U.S. citizen) were no longer enforceable in light of Afroyim (as well as the earlier Schneider v. Rusk decision) and gave notice terminating these treaties.[58]
The Afroyim decision stated that no one with United States citizenship could lose that citizenship without his consent.[59][60] Nevertheless, the Court held in a 1971 case, Rogers v. Bellei,[61] that a person who had acquired U.S. citizenship via jus sanguinis, through birth outside the United States to an American parent or parents, could still risk loss of citizenship in various ways, since their citizenship was the result of federal statutes rather than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.[62][63][64] The statutory provision whereby Bellei lost his U.S. citizenship—a U.S. residency requirement which Bellei had failed to satisfy[65]—was repealed in 1978, as part of the same bill that eliminated the foreign voting provision struck down in Afroyim.[57]
Additionally, even after Afroyim, people found to have committed fraud in the naturalization process (for example, by lying about themselves to U.S. immigration officials) could still have their naturalization voided on the grounds that they had never truly been naturalized as U.S. citizens in the first place.[66] As one example among many, the naturalization of John Demjanjuk was revoked amid allegations that he had concealed his involvement with Nazi extermination camps in the course of applying for immigration to the United States after World War II.[67]
Although the Afroyim decision appeared to rule out any revocation of a person's U.S. citizenship against his will, it would take more than twenty years for this principle to become fully established; the U.S. government continued for the most part to pursue loss-of-citizenship cases based on an individual's conduct alone, especially when foreign naturalization was involved.[68] An official statement by the Attorney General in 1969 took the position that "voluntary relinquishment" of U.S. citizenship could be inferred as a result of an individual's having performed certain specified actions, such as foreign naturalization, a foreign oath of allegiance, or foreign government or military service—though the assumption could still be countered by suitable evidence that the person had not in fact intended to give up citizenship.[69] In a 1980 case, however—Vance v. Terrazas[70]—the Supreme Court ruled that intent to relinquish citizenship needed to be proved by itself, and not simply inferred from an individual's having voluntarily performed an action designated by Congress as being incompatible with an intent to keep one's citizenship.[71][72] The Court held, however, that such a determination could be made upon the preponderance of the evidence and did not need to be based on overwhelming evidence.[59] Changes along the lines prescribed in Vance v. Terrazas were made to the citizenship law by Congress in 1986.[73]
In 1990, the State Department adopted new guidelines for evaluating potential loss-of-citizenship cases.[74] Under these new rules, the government assumes in almost all situations that an American who performs a potentially expatriating act did not in fact intend to give up his U.S. citizenship, unless he explicitly indicates to U.S. officials that this was his intention.[75] Exceptions to the presumption of intent to keep U.S. citizenship are limited to extreme cases such as treason, high-level employment in a foreign government, or formal renunciation of citizenship before U.S. consular officials.[76]
The concept of dual citizenship, which previously had been strongly opposed by the U.S. government, has become more accepted in the years since Afroyim.[3] State Department policy since 1990 has gone beyond the demands of the Afroyim and Terrazas decisions in allowing freedom to U.S. citizens to take advantage of multiple citizenships. In the words of Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at Temple University and a former law clerk to Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter,[77] "In the long run, Afroyim's vision of an absolute right to retain citizenship has been largely, if quietly, vindicated. As a matter of practice, it is now virtually impossible to lose American citizenship without formally and expressly renouncing it."[76]
Opposition to dual citizenship has continued in some circles,[78][79][80][81] and in 2005, an immigration-related bill — H.R. 3938, the "Enforcement First Immigration Reform Act of 2005" — was introduced in the 109th Congress by Representative J. D. Hayworth of Arizona. Had this bill been enacted into law, it would (among other things) have repudiated the State Department's current permissive policy toward the use of foreign citizenship after U.S. naturalization[82] by making it a felony for a naturalized U.S. citizen to vote in an election in, or use a passport from, his former country.[83] H.R. 3938 would also have reversed the State Department's 1990 liberalization of its policy toward dual citizenship.[84] This bill was never brought to a vote and died when the 109th Congress adjourned on January 3, 2007.[85]
After his Supreme Court victory, Afroyim divided his time between West Brighton (Staten Island, New York) and Safad, Israel until his death on May 19, 1984 in West Brighton.[35]
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