Schneider v. Rusk

Appellant
Angelika L. Schneider
Appellee
Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State
Appellant's Claim
That a section of the 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act, which strippedthe citizenship of naturalized Americans who lived abroad for more than three years was unconstitutional.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
Milton V. Freeman
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Bruce J. Terris
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, William O. Douglas (writing for the Court), Arthur Goldberg, Potter Stewart, Earl Warren
Justices Dissenting
Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, Byron R. White (William J. Brennan, Jr. did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
18 May 1964
Decision
Upheld appellant's claim.
Significance
The Court continued a trend of limiting when Congress could force naturalizedAmericans to involuntarily give up their citizenship.
The privileges of American citizenship have enticed millions of immigrants tocome to the United States and adopt this country as their homeland. According to the Fourteenth Amendment, "all persons born or naturalized in the UnitedStates" are American citizens, and Congress has the power to regulate naturalization, the process by which foreigners become citizens. The Constitution,however, does not spell out when people can be expatriated, or stripped of their citizenship. This issue has been left to the Supreme Court to decide.
For much of its history, the Court ruled that Americans could not voluntarilyexpatriate themselves, without the government's consent. But in the twentieth century, the Court recognized the right of Americans to freely renounce their citizenship. A thornier constitutional issue has been involuntary expatriation: when Congress declares that, after committing certain acts, people canbe stripped of their citizenship. In Perez v. Brownell (1958), the Court ruled that by voting in a foreign election, citizens implicitly renounce their citizenship, and Congress can make that action grounds for expatriation.
At the same time, however, the Court ruled that a law expatriating a citizenwho deserted the military during wartime was not constitutional (Trop v. Dulles [1958]). In Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez (1963), the Court held that a citizen who lived in a foreign country during wartime to avoid thedraft could not be expatriated. A year later, the Court once again examined involuntary expatriation.
No "Second Class Citizenship" Allowed
Schneider v. Rusk dealt with the rights of naturalized Americans. Angelika Schneider, a native of Germany, had come to the United States as a child. She and her parents were naturalized, and Schneider lived in America through her college years. Afterward, she went abroad to continue her studies and married a German citizen. Schneider then settled in Germany and began a family. Twice she returned to America for brief visits. In 1959, when Schneider tried to renew her U.S. passport, the State Department refused her request, saying she was no longer an American citizen.
The government based its decision on a section of the 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act. The law said naturalized citizens who lived in their nativelands for three years lost their American citizenship. The government believed returning to one's homeland weakened a naturalized citizen's allegiance tothe United States, and sometimes put the American government in conflict with foreign nations. In 1962, almost 1,000 people had been expatriated under this law.
Schneider sued the State Department to regain her citizenship. A district court found for the government, and Schneider appealed to the Supreme Court. Inhis decision, Justice Douglas noted that the justices' views on expatriationhad varied in the past, but in this case, the Court ruled 5-3 that the pertinent provision of the Immigration and Naturalization Act was unconstitutional.
Douglas wrote, "We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity and arecoextensive." He then cited the Court's past disagreements on expatriation, and concluded with the majority's reasoning in the present case:

This statute proceeds on the impermissible assumption that naturalized citizensas a class are less reliable and bear less allegiance to this country than do the native born. This is an assumption that is impossible for us to make. Moreover, while the Fifth Amendment contains no equal protection clause, it does forbid discrimination that is "so unjustifiable as to be violative of dueprocess" . . . The discrimination aimed at naturalized citizens drastically limits their right to live and work abroad in way that other citizens may. Itcreates indeed a second-class citizenship.

The Historical Record for Residency
In the view of the three dissenting justices, Schneider's choice to live in Germany amounted to her renouncing her citizenship. Justice Clark noted that almost 30 other countries expatriated naturalized citizens who lived in theirnative lands for a number of years. Clark also turned to the earliest days ofthe Republic to bolster his argument for the importance of requiring naturalized citizens to live in America. Quoting James Madison, Clark wrote, "It maybe a question of some nicety, how far we can make our law to admit an aliento the right of citizenship, step by step; but there is no doubt we may, andought to require residence as an essential."
The dissenters also believed that Schneider's wanting both her German residence and American citizenship was a selfish act. Clark wrote, "She wishes to retain her citizenship on a standby basis of her own benefit in the event of trouble."
The majority's view, however, continued to hold sway on the Court. Three years later, in Afroyim v. Rusk (1967) the Court said Congress could not,under any circumstances, expatriate a naturalized American (or a native citizen, for that matter) without a person's consent. Congress does have the right, though, to expatriate if a naturalized person obtained citizenship using fraud or misrepresentation.
The issue of expatriation is not as clear-cut for citizens born or naturalized abroad. In Rogers v. Bellei (1971), the Court upheld a law that required people born outside the country, and who have just one U.S. parent, to live in America for at least five consecutive years, or lose their citizenship.
Related Cases

• Perez v. Brownell, 356 U.S. 44 (1958).
  
• Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958).
  
• Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144 (1963).
  
• Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967).