The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide if mothers and fathers may be treated differently in determining whether their children may claim American citizenship.
The case involves Ruben Flores-Villar, who was born in Tijuana, Mexico, but was raised by his father and grandmother, both American citizens, in San Diego. His mother was Mexican, and his parents were not married.Mr. Flores-Villar tried to avoid deportation by claiming American citizenship. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, rejected that claim under a law that spelled out different requirements for mothers and fathers whose children were born abroad and out of wedlock to a partner who was not an American citizen.
The law, since amended, allowed fathers to transmit citizenship to their children only if the fathers had lived in the United States before the child was born for a total of 10 years, five of them after age 14. Mothers were required to have lived in the United States for a year before their child was born. (The amended law kept the general system but shortened the residency requirement for fathers.)
