Afroyim v. Rusk

"Afroyim" redirects here. For the artist and ex-wife of plaintiff-appellant Beys Afroyim, see Soshana Afroyim.
Afroyim v. Rusk
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued February 20, 1967
Decided May 29, 1967
Full case nameBeys Afroyim v. Dean Rusk, Secretary of State
Citations387 U.S. 253 (more)
87 S. Ct. 1660; 18 L. Ed. 2d 757; 1967 U.S. LEXIS 2844
Case history
Prior250 F. Supp. 686 (S.D.N.Y. 1966); 361 F.2d 102 (2nd Cir. 1966); cert. granted, 385 U.S. 917 (1966)
Holding
Congress has no power under the Constitution to revoke a person's U.S. citizenship unless he voluntarily relinquishes it. In particular, citizenship may not be revoked as a consequence of voting in a foreign election.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Earl Warren
Associate Justices
Hugo Black · William O. Douglas
Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II
William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart
Byron White · Abe Fortas
Case opinions
MajorityBlack, joined by Warren, Douglas, Brennan, Fortas
DissentHarlan, joined by Clark, Stewart, White
Laws applied
Nationality Act of 1940; U.S. Const. amends. V, XIV
This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings
Perez v. Brownell (1958)
A 1961 letter from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service reporting Beys Afroyim's loss of citizenship

Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that citizens of the United States may not be deprived of their citizenship involuntarily.[1][2][3] The U.S. government had attempted to revoke the citizenship of Beys Afroyim, a man born in Poland, because he had cast a vote in an Israeli election after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. The Supreme Court decided that Afroyim's right to retain his citizenship was guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In so doing, the Court struck down a federal law mandating loss of U.S. citizenship for voting in a foreign election—thereby overruling one of its own precedents, Perez v. Brownell (1958), in which it had upheld loss of citizenship under similar circumstances less than a decade earlier.

The Afroyim decision opened the way for a wider acceptance of dual (or multiple) citizenship in United States law.[4] The Bancroft Treaties—a series of agreements between the United States and other nations which had sought to limit dual citizenship following naturalization—were eventually abandoned after the Carter administration concluded that Afroyim and other Supreme Court decisions had rendered them unenforceable.

The impact of Afroyim v. Rusk was narrowed by a later case, Rogers v. Bellei (1971), in which the Court determined that the Fourteenth Amendment safeguarded citizenship only when a person was born or naturalized in the United States, and that Congress retained authority to regulate the citizenship status of a person who was born outside the United States to an American parent. However, the specific law at issue in Rogers v. Bellei—a requirement for a minimum period of U.S. residence that Bellei had failed to satisfy—was repealed by Congress in 1978. As a consequence of revised policies adopted in 1990 by the United States Department of State, it is now (in the words of one expert) "virtually impossible to lose American citizenship without formally and expressly renouncing it."[5]

  1. ^ Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967).  This article incorporates public domain material from judicial opinions or other documents created by the federal judiciary of the United States.
  2. ^ "Ruling Protects Citizenship Right". New York Times. May 30, 1967. The Supreme Court ruled today that Congress lacks the constitutional authority to pass laws that strip American citizens of their nationality without their consent.
  3. ^ Dionisopoulos (1970–71), p. 235. "In [Afroyim v. Rusk] the Court declared that American citizenship is an absolute constitutional right. Therefore, the Government of the United States may not forcibly deprive an American of his nationality."
  4. ^ Spiro (2005), p. 147. "Plural citizenship ... may come to be the mark of globalization, as state-based allegiances today diminish in importance relative to other affiliations. The Supreme Court's 1967 decision in Afroyim v. Rusk supplies an early glimpse of the transition.... Afroyim opened the door to the maintenance of multiple active national ties. It is to Afroyim that one can trace the genesis of the late modern edition of American citizenship, a version less jealous of alternative attachments."
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Spiro_163 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).