Sessions V. Morales-Santana Case Summary

The Supreme Court case of Sessions v. Morales-Santana deals with the issue of whether or not a distinction based on gender in establishing derivative citizenship for immigrants violates the 5th amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The questions presented by this case are: (1) Whether Congress’s decision to require different physical presence requirements for unwed citizen mothers than unwed citizen fathers in order to pass citizenship to a foreign- born child violates the 5th amendment's guarantee of equal protection and (2) whether the court of appeals was mistaken in granting citizenship in the absence of any statutory authority.Thusly, the rights of immigrants and the right against gender discrimination are both at stake for the petitioner of this case. The case was granted on June 28, 2016, oral argument was held before the Supreme Court on November 9, 2016, and the case was decided on June 12, 2017. Luis Ramon Morales-Santana was born in 1962 in the Dominican Republic and became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 1975. His father had become an American citizen in 1917 and his mother was a citizen of the Dominican Republic. According to the Immigration and Nationality Act that was active at the time of Morales-Santana’s birth, a child born in a foreign country to an unwed citizen father and to a non-citizen mother only was a citizen at birth if the father was physically present in the United States for at least 10 years prior to the child’s birth (at least 5 of these years had to be after the age 14). Since his father left to work in the Dominican Republic and did not meet the requirements, citizenship was not transferred to