Sabangan v. Powell, 03-16426.
| Decision Date | 01 July 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-16426.,03-16426. |
| Citation | 375 F.3d 818 |
| Parties | Jacinto A. SABANGAN, Jr.; Esther Hae Jin Sohn, Plaintiffs-Appellants, and Eun Kyung Jang; Frances Soo-Jin Sohn; Dianne Go Guiao; Seung Gin Lee; Kyung Min Yu; Hyun Min Yu; Paul Oh; Jun Sub Ham; Claudagh S. Pascua; Irineo Delos Santos Ignacio; Roy James B. Mendoza; Christopher T. Matias; Leonardo Supnet Pascua, Jr.; Christopher Supnet Pascua; Da-Hee Ju, Mi Sook Kim; Ah Lam Jung; Joon Su Pae; Ko Woon Park; Ri Na Jung; Heog-Jun Choi; Sung Hyun Lim; Maria Corazon B. Mendoza; Marias C. Elbo Jr.; Evelyn C. Elbo; Brian M. Flores, Plaintiffs, v. Colin POWELL, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Reynaldo O. Yana, Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, for the plaintiffs-appellants.
Gregory Baka, Assistant United States Attorney, Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northen Mariana Islands, for the defendant-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of the Northern Mariana Islands, Alex R. Munson, Chief Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-02-00039.
Before: FARRIS, NOONAN, and RAWLINSON, Circuit Judges.
Jacinto A. Sabangan, Jr., and Esther Hae Jin Sohn appeal the judgment of the district court against them in their suit against Colin Powell, Secretary of State, to establish that they are citizens of the United States and so entitled to United States passports. Reading section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (the CNMI) by the Covenant between the CNMI and the United States, (the Covenant), Act of Mar. 24, 1976, Pub.L. No. 94-241, 90 Stat. 263, reprinted in 48 U.S.C. § 1801, we conclude that Sabangan and Sohn are citizens of the United States. We reverse the judgment of the district court and remand.
The Covenant, section 501(a) became effective January 9, 1978. Sohn was born December 12, 1982. Sabangan was born November 30, 1983. Both Sohn and Sabangan were born in the CNMI.
June 16, 1999, the State Department rejected Sabangan's claim of citizenship and application for a United States passport. August 26, 2002, Sohn's claim and application were similarly rejected. September 5, 2002, Sabangan and Sohn began this action in the district court, seeking a declaration that they were citizens of the United States and an injunction ordering the department to issue them United States passports. July 10, 2003, the district court dismissed their complaint for failure to state a claim, and July 12, 2003, judgment was entered against them.
Sabangan and Sohn appeal.
The Fourteenth Amendment, section 1 reads:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 501(a) of the Covenant reads:
To the extent that they are not applicable of their own force, the following provisions of the Constitution of the United States will be applicable within the Northern Mariana Islands as if the Northern Mariana Islands were one of the several States: ... Amendment 14, Section 1....
Evidently section 501 of the Covenant makes all of section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment applicable to the CNMI, which is to be regarded as "one of the several States." Sabangan and Sohn were therefore born in a jurisdiction at a time in which by force of the Constitution itself they became citizens of the United States.
The government opposes this straightforward reading. First, the government says that the Fourteenth Amendment, section 1 only applies of its own force to persons who are actually born in the United States. But the government abandons this argument by admitting that Congress has power to confer citizenship on persons born in territories of the United States as Congress has done in various times as to persons born in Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Obviously it is not the Constitution alone but the act of Congress applying section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment that make Sabangan and Sohn citizens of the United States.
Second, the government argues that the straightforward reading of the Covenant makes section 303 of the Covenant superfluous. This section reads:
All persons born in the Commonwealth on or after the effective date of this Section and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States will be citizens of the United States at birth.
Congress, however, has duplicated the Fourteenth Amendment, section 1, in another important statute, the Immigration and Nationality Act, providing that persons "born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are citizens of the United States. 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a). No one has supposed that this emphatic restatement of the Constitution was a silly or superfluous legislative gesture.
The government persists: Section 301(a) of the Covenant provides United States citizenship for
all persons born in the Northern Mariana Islands who are citizens of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands on the day preceding the effective date of this Section, and who on that date are domiciled in the Northern Mariana Islands or in the United States or any territory or possession thereof.
Surely, the government suggests, this specific section, which became effective only in 1986, was superfluous if section 501 of the Covenant had already in 1978...
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Torres v. Barr
...and residents, as well as anyone born on CNMI soil, became citizens of the United States. See id. art. III; Sabangan v. Powell , 375 F.3d 818, 819–21 (9th Cir. 2004).At the time, there were roughly 16,000 people living in the CNMI. S. Rep. No. 110-324, at 2 (2008). The CNMI government retai......