Supreme Court Rules Federal Citizenship Rules Unconstitutional, Gender Equality Prevails
Recently the Supreme Court has made a ruling that has progressed society forward and upheld gender equality. On June 12, 2017, in the case of Sessions, Attorney General v. Morales-Santana, the Supreme Court ruled that the current federal citizenship rules were unconstitutional. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. This decision is a major victory for the justice, who for 20 years battled unsuccessfully for equal treatment of men and women seeking to pass citizenship on to their children.
The current federal citizenship rules state that a child born to an unwed mother automatically becomes a citizen of the United States if the mother previously lived in the United States for at least one-year. However, if a child was born to an unwed father, that child could not become a United States citizen unless the father had lived in the United States for at least five continuous years and two of which the father had to be over the age of 14. In essence, an unwed mother’s child was given preferential treatment over an unwed father’s child.