Sessions v. Morales-Santana
The Court ruled that a decades-old immigration law violated the Constitution's equal-protection guarantee because it let unwed American mothers pass citizenship to children born overseas after just one year of U.S. residence, while unwed American fathers needed far longer.
But the man who challenged the law still didn't get citizenship: rather than extending the shorter rule to fathers, the Court held that Congress would have preferred applying the longer residency rule to everyone, leaving it to Congress to fix the gender gap going forward.
How it got here: An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected his citizenship claim; the Second Circuit reversed on equal-protection grounds; the government asked the Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Luis Morales-Santana was born in the Dominican Republic to an unwed Dominican mother and a Puerto Rican-born American father who had left the U.S. just 20 days before turning 19 — too soon to meet a law requiring five years of U.S. residence after age 14. Decades later, facing deportation over criminal convictions, he argued he was already a citizen through his father, and that treating unwed fathers worse than unwed mothers (who needed only one year of residence) was unconstitutional sex discrimination.
The question before the Court
Could Congress require unwed American fathers to live in the U.S. much longer than unwed American mothers before either could pass citizenship to a child born abroad?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that the law's gender-based residency requirement violates the Constitution's equal-protection guarantee. Requiring unwed fathers to live in the U.S. far longer than unwed mothers before either could pass citizenship to a child born abroad rested on outdated stereotypes about mothers as natural caregivers and fathers as indifferent, and the government's justifications (ensuring a strong American connection and preventing statelessness) didn't hold up.
But the victory was only half of what Morales-Santana wanted. Rather than extending the mothers' easier one-year rule to fathers, the Court decided Congress would have preferred applying the longer residency requirement across the board until Congress writes a new, gender-neutral rule. So Morales-Santana still doesn't automatically get citizenship through this ruling — Congress, not the Court, must now set a uniform standard.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
People born abroad to one American and one foreign parent, and immigration officials who process their citizenship claims, now know the old gender-based rule is unconstitutional. But the practical fix flows the opposite way many expected: instead of giving unwed fathers' children an easier path, the Court applied the longer, stricter residency requirement to unwed mothers' children too, until Congress writes a new uniform rule.
What changes now
The case returns to lower courts, but the ruling means Morales-Santana does not gain citizenship through this decision — the longer, five-year physical-presence rule now applies going forward to children of unwed citizen mothers as well as fathers. Congress remains free to write a new, uniform residency requirement that treats mothers and fathers the same; until it does, courts will apply the longer rule across the board.
What this does not decide
The Court's equal-protection ruling did not give Morales-Santana citizenship or extend the easier one-year rule to unwed fathers. It also left unresolved what precise residency period Congress should adopt going forward, deferring that policy choice entirely to Congress.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas agreed with the majority's remedial holding that the Court could not extend the one-year rule to unwed fathers, and said that resolved the case. He would not have reached whether the sex-based distinction was unconstitutional, whether Morales-Santana had standing to raise his father's rights, or whether current versions of the citizenship statutes are constitutional, since none of that mattered once relief was unavailable.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Because Congress had drawn a line based on sex, the Court applied heightened scrutiny, the demanding test requiring the government to show an important objective and a close fit between that objective and the sex-based rule it chose.
- The Court traced the law to 1940s-era assumptions that unwed mothers were automatically the sole, caring guardians of nonmarital children while unwed fathers were presumed indifferent — stereotypes the Court said no longer justify treating parents differently by sex.
- The government offered two justifications: ensuring the child had a strong American connection, and preventing statelessness. The Court found neither survived heightened scrutiny — the connection rationale rested on the same discredited stereotype, and the statelessness rationale had no support in the law's history and ignored that unwed fathers actually faced equal or greater statelessness risk under many foreign laws.
- Having found the sex-based distinction unconstitutional, the Court turned to remedy, applying a framework asking whether a court should erase the favored group's special benefit or instead extend that benefit to the disadvantaged group, based on what Congress would have wanted.
- Weighing Congress's clear preference for a longer residency requirement as the general rule and the disruption that would result from making the one-year exception the norm, the Court concluded Congress would rather have eliminated the mothers' shorter exception than extend it to fathers.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Fiallo v. Bell (430 U. S. 787)
Says that case involved immigration entry preferences for aliens, not a citizenship claim, so its relaxed review doesn't apply here.
Distinguishes Nguyen v. INS (533 U. S. 53)
Says that case dealt with proving a father-child relationship, not the length of residency, so it doesn't control this dispute.
Distinguishes Miller v. Albright (523 U. S. 420)
Says that case also addressed a paternity-acknowledgment requirement, a different issue than residency length.
Reaffirms Califano v. Westcott (443 U. S. 76)
Relies on this case's two-option remedy framework for fixing unconstitutional sex-based benefit laws.