“Supreme Court Petition Receives Boost From Seven Amicus Briefs”

Press release:

An impressive and diverse array of academics, current and former territorial officials, and civil rights groups represented by top national law firms have filed a total of seven “friend of the court” briefs asking the Supreme Court to grant review of a D.C. Circuit decision denying recognition of birthright citizenship in U.S. territories based on the controversial Insular Cases, a series of early 1900s decisions the Ninth Circuit recently explained have “been the subject of extensive judicial, academic, and popular criticism.”  The briefs were filed in support of a petition for certiorari submitted last month 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 withhold citizenship from persons born in U.S. territories.

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