Gender Differentiation in Citizenship
Overview of Supreme Court Precedent
The Court’s most recent equal protection pronouncements with respect to sex discrimination involved immigration issues. In Miller v. Albright (1998), the Court considered a challenge to Section 309 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 [which set rules for U.S. citizenship]. The petitioner, the child of an American father and a Filipino mother, contended that Section 309 imposed additional requirements for establishing American citizenship when a child is fathered by an American citizen outside of the United States. For children born of a citizen mother and an alien father, citizenship is established at birth. However, for children born of…
