Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case About American Samoans Being Denied Full Citizenship

Undated photo of John Fitisemanu, lead plaintiff in Fitisemanu v. United States, a lawsuit seeking a declaration that American Samoans are full U.S. citizens. Photo courtesy of Equally American

The Supreme Court on Oct. 17 refused to consider a challenge to an appeals court decision denying full U.S. citizenship to American Samoans.

American Samoa, which is roughly 1,600 miles northeast of New Zealand and more than 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii, became a U.S. territory in 1900. It has a population of about 55,000, but more than 100,000 American Samoans reside in the continental United States, mostly in the west. Congress adopted laws granting citizenship to those born in other U.S. territories—the Northern Marianas, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico—but not to those born in American Samoa.

Residents of the territory can’t vote in presidential elections and lack a voting representative in Congress, but American Samoans can apply for full U.S. citizenship through the naturalization process.

Many American Samoans defend the current status of their territory.

“Most property in American Samoa is owned communally among families. Within villages, there are communal lands where extended families live together. Family members select chiefs, or matai, to regulate village life and oversee the land. Samoan law restricts the sale of most property to anyone with less than 50% Samoan ancestry,” according to a 2020 article by The Associated Press.

The Biden administration filed a brief urging the Supreme Court not to take the case.

In the case, American Samoans living in Utah filed a lawsuit in 2018, asserting that because they are deemed “non-citizen nationals” instead of U.S. citizens, they are denied various rights, such as voting, that U.S. citizens take for granted. Their U.S. passports contain an endorsement that reads, “The bearer is a United States national and not a United States citizen.”

The Supreme Court turned away the case, Fitisemanu v. United States, court file 21-1394, in an unsigned order. No justices dissented from the ruling. No reasons were provided for the decision.

The lead plaintiff, John Fitisemanu, expressed disappointment in the ruling.

“It’s a punch in the gut for the Justices to leave in place a ruling that says I am not equal to other Americans simply because I was born in a U.S. territory. I was born on U.S. soil, have a U.S. passport, and pay my taxes like everyone else,” Fitisemanu told The Epoch Times in a statement.

“But because of a discriminatory federal law, I am not recognized as a U.S. citizen. As a result, I can’t even vote in local elections, much less for president. This is un-American and cannot be squared with America’s democratic and constitutional principles.”

The trial judge in the case, Utah-based Clark Waddoups of the U.S. District Court, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled in December 2019 that American Samoans were full U.S. citizens and ordered the Trump administration to issue the plaintiffs in the case new passports reflecting their full-citizen status.

In his 69-page ruling, Waddoups wrote that the court was “not imposing ‘citizenship by judicial fiat.’”

“The action is required by the mandate of the Fourteenth Amendment as construed and applied by Supreme Court precedent,” he wrote.

At the time, the United States government argued in a brief that “such a novel holding would be contrary to the decisions of every court of appeals to have considered the question, inconsistent with over a century of historical practice by all three branches of the United States government, and conflict with the strong objection of the local government of American Samoa.”

In June 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled against Fitisemanu, finding that “neither constitutional text nor Supreme Court precedent demands the district court’s interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Congress “plays the preeminent role in the determination of citizenship in unincorporated territorial lands, and ... the courts play but a subordinate role in the process.”

The people of American Samoa do not support the granting of U.S. citizenship and have urged the court “not to impose citizenship on an unwilling people from a courthouse thousands of miles away.” The circumstances “advise against the extension of birthright citizenship to American Samoa.”

Neil Weare, president of Equally American and co-counsel in the case, told The Epoch Times in a statement that he’s displeased by the ruling. The group advocates for equality and civil rights in U.S. territories.

“Today’s inaction by the Justices highlights the fact that America has a colonies problem. On top of that, our country stubbornly refuses to recognize that this problem even exists, much less do anything about it,” he said.