LOCAL GOVERNMENT POLICIES PREVENTING IMMIGRANTS FROM MARRYING

The Nashville, Tennessee City Attorney has ordered the local County Clerk to deny marriage licenses to people who cannot present a valid Social Security number.  The effect of this is to possibly deny all undocumented immigrants and many legal immigrants the right to marry.

A Tennessee state law enacted in 1997 requires applicants for a marriage license to include their Social Security Number on the application.  This law was enacted to comply with a federal law requiring states to enact such requirements.  The stated purpose of the federal law is to create better enforcement of judgments for child support by giving states a means of identifying parents.  This, according to the City Attorney, is “an important, if not compelling, public interest.”  The City Attorney further reasoned that because there are methods for people legally in the US to obtain a Social Security number, the Tennessee state law is not a significant interference with the right to marry.

The right to marry has long been recognized as a fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, and laws interfering with it must be necessary to further a compelling government interest.  Merely furthering an important government interest is not a sufficient basis upon which to interfere with a fundamental right, such as the right to marry.  Moreover, people who are not citizens of the US enjoy the same rights under the Fourteenth Amendment as citizens, whether here legally or not, because the Fourteenth Amendment applies to all people who are subject to the jurisdiction of the US.  Critics of the Tennessee measure argue that denying people the right to be legally married will not further the purpose of better enforcement of child support orders.  If anything, it will make obtaining and enforcing those orders more difficult, because there will be no legal record of the relationship of the parents.  A number of other local and state governments around the country have similar laws.

The news of Tennessee’s decision is even more troubling in light of the Social Security Administration’s recent announcement of a proposed rule dealing with when it will issue numbers for nonwork purposes.  Currently, the SSA will issue SSNs for nonwork purposes if it is required to receive a federal, state or local benefit, so long as the concerned agency provides a document explaining why the SSN is needed.  Under the rule the SSA has proposed, numbers would be issued only if necessary to obtain a federal benefit.  Marriage is a matter of state law, and under this rule the SSA will not issue a number to allow someone to marry. 

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