Biden's Justice Department Embraces 'Racist' Insular Cases, Argues Against Right to Citizenship in U.S. Territories, Says Equally American
One week after Members of Congress called on the Biden-Harris Department of Justice to condemn the racist Insular Cases, the department has instead doubled down to argue based on the Insular Cases that people born in U.S. territories have no constitutional right to U.S. citizenship, Equally American, which advocates for equality and civil rights in U.S. territories, said in a release issued Thursday.
2021-09-17 12:55:39 - VI News Staff
Earlier this year a deeply divided Tenth Circuit panel reversed a district court decision in Fitisemanu v. United States which recognized that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees a right to citizenship to anyone born in the United States, including U.S. territories. In July, John Fitisemanu – a passport-holding American born in American Samoa who is denied recognition as a U.S. citizen under a discriminatory federal law – petitioned for review of the panel’s decision by the full Tenth Circuit. Today’s filing by the Justice Department argues the Tenth Circuit should leave the panel’s expansive application of the Insular Cases in place, despite the Supreme Court’s guidance last year that the Insular Cases should not be further expanded.
“It is hard to understand how the Justice Department’s expansive embrace of the Insular Cases can be squared with the Biden-Harris Administration’s values,” said Neil Weare, who represents the Fitisemanu plaintiffs and is president and founder of Equally American.
As the Members of Congress highlighted in their letter last week, during President Joe Biden’s first week in office he called on the nation to “confront systemic racism and white supremacy.” And in July, Mr. Biden addressed continued discrimination in federal benefits programs against disabled residents of U.S. territories by arguing “there can be no second-class citizens in the United States of America.” Attorney General Merrick Garland explained during his confirmation hearing that “we do not yet have equal justice. Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination.”
Yet despite all this, the Biden-Harris Justice Department continues to argue against equality and even citizenship in U.S. territories by relying on the Plessy-era Insular Cases, which one leading constitutional scholar has called “central documents in the history of American racism,” stated Equally American.