SUPREME COURT RULES THAT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST FATHERS ACCEPTABLE

The US Supreme Court has dealt a fatal blow for many fathers around the US seeking to petition for their children to enter the US. The case, US v. Wong Kim Ark, involved an immigration statute that says that fathers of children born out of wedlock must demonstrate establishing sufficient ties to the child before the child reaches adulthood in order to petition for the immigration of the child. Mothers, on the other hand, only need to show that a blood relationship exists.

The plaintiff in the case was Lorelyn Penero Miller, a Filipino national who was born out of wedlock to an American father stationed in the military in the Philippines and Filipino mother. Ms. Miller applied for citizenship in 1992 while she was living in Texas with her father, but was denied because the father had not established ties before she reached adulthood.

By a margin of 6 to 3, the Justices upheld the rules on citizenship. Three Justices - Stevens, Rehnquist and Scalia denied the case saying that there is a closer connection between a mother and child then father that does not exist with fathers. Three Justices, Ginsburg, Breyer and Souter, found the statute to be unconstitutional form of sex discrimination. The other two Justices, O’Connor and Kennedy contended that Miller’s father would have had to be a party to the action. Justice Breyer suggested that if the father in this case would have challenged the law, there would have been five votes to strike it down. This may leave open the door for future challenges of the statute.

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