Biden Administration Asks Supreme Court Not to Take Up ‘Insular’ Citizenship Cases
The Biden administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pass over the opportunity to overrule a series of century-old rulings called “Insular Cases.”
Insular Cases deny residents of U.S. territories full constitutional rights by stating that the Constitution applies in full to incorporated territories and only in part to unincorporated territories. In a brief filed on Monday (pdf) in response to the Fitisemanu v. United States case, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that the lawsuit would make a poor vehicle to reexamine Insular Cases.
The case, filed by John Fitisemanu, Pale Tuli, and Rosavita Tuli, challenges the denial of citizenship rights to residents of U.S. territories. The three individuals have been refused American citizenship as they were born in American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the United States….