Biden Admin Tells SCOTUS to Pass on Birthright Citizenship Case

President Joe Biden’s administration asked the
Supreme Court
on Monday not to take up a case regarding citizenship rights for American Samoans despite advocates who say it would give the high court a chance to undo decades of precedent that Justices
Neil Gorsuch
and
Sonia Sotomayor
have decried as racist.

Justice Department
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the Supreme Court
in a brief filed Monday
that an appeals court was correct to find that Congress should be in charge of citizenship decisions about people born in territories and that the case in question, Fitisemanu v. U.S., would be a poor vessel for reexamining a series of century-old rulings known as the Insular Cases.

“The government in no way relies on the indefensible and discredited aspects of the Insular Cases’ reasoning and rhetoric,” Prelogar wrote, adding, “This case would be an unsuitable vehicle for reexamining those cases.”

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But last term, Gorsuch and Sotomayor, who represent opposing ends of the court’s ideological spectrum, rebuked such rulings, saying they relied on racist and imperialist sentiment to deem residents of some U.S. territories not fully entitled to the Constitution’s protections, including birthright citizenship.

“The flaws in the Insular Cases are as fundamental as they are shameful,” Gorsuch wrote after the majority rejected a bid by U.S. residents living in Puerto Rico to claim benefits under a federal insurance program. While Gorsuch signed on to the majority opinion, he decried the so-called Insular Cases that guided the decision for having “no foundation in the Constitution,” going as far as to say they “rest on racial stereotypes.”

Advocates expressed disappointment in the DOJ’s Monday request to the high court, including Neil Weare, president and founder of Equally American, a group that supports equal rights in U.S. territories.

“It is shocking that the Biden-Harris Administration and the Solicitor General continue to breathe life into the Insular Cases, which were grounded in a vision of white supremacy that has no place in our society, much less briefs filed by the U.S. Justice Department,” Weare wrote in a
statement
.

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However, some of American Samoa’s roughly 55,197 residents prefer the status quo, as the territory’s political leadership and delegate to Congress, Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen,
filed a separate brief
saying any decision on the issue should be handled through a political process and not through the courts.

The Supreme Court is likely to decide whether to take the case later this year in the fall 2022 term.