SCOTUS Symposium: Remedies and constitutional litigation (updated)

I do not teach or write in Remedies, except to the extent that basic remedial principles arise in more general Civ Pro or § 1983 work. Even in that context, I had not considered the special problems of ensuring equality through an injunction. In the First Amendment context, it is easy: Stop enforcing the prohibition on nude dancing or leafletting on the sidewalk and let the plaintiff have nude dancing in his bar or leaflet on the sidewalk. When the claim is that the laws are treating one group differently than the other, there are two choices: Extend the advantageous treatment to the disadvantaged group or extend the disadvantage to everyone. And that depends on statutory design.

This was the problem for the Court in today's decision in Sessions v. Morales-Santana. Federal law must provide rules for when to accord citizenship at birth to children born outside the U.S. where one parent is a citizen. The law imposes on the citizen parent a five-year (two years since age 14) pre-birth residency requirement in order for the citizen parent to transmit citizenship at birth to the child. And that rule controls three situations: Married parents where the father is the citizen; married parents where the mother is the citizen; and unmarried parents where the father is the citizen. The statute then frames an exception to that rule for unmarried parents where the mother is the citizen, who only must have lived in the U.S. for one year pre-birth. The majority held that this less-favorable treatment for unmarried fathers violated equal protection.

But then what?

Morales-Santana was born in the Dominican Republic to a U.S. citizen father and a Dominican mother; the father was 20 days short of satisfying the statutory requirement for transmitting citizenship at birth. What Morales-Santana wanted from the Court was to apply the unmarried-mother rule to unmarried fathers, which his father satisfied, and which would make him a citizen at birth.* He would get that relief if the Court followed its ordinary equal-protection approach of extending the benefit (one-year residency) to the disadvantaged person. But the Court could remedy the equal protection violation a different way: Eliminate the favorable treatment to the differentially treated group (unmarried-mother citizens) and subject everyone to the five-year/two-year rule. That eliminates the equal protection problem, but does not make Morales-Santana a citizen at birth or entitle him to a suspension of removal.

[*] Morales-Santana was trying to avoid deportation as a result of some state criminal convictions.

The Court chose the latter, because the former would be inconsistent with congressional intent and the structure of the law and would disrupt the statute. The rule for unmarried-mother citizens is framed as an exception to the general rule, suggesting that Congress saw the five/two residency rule as the norm. And if the Court extended the one-year rule to unmarried-father citizens (Morales-Santana's preference), it would have produced a system in which married parents were treated less favorably than unmarried parents, itself raising constitutional problems. And the Court believed that Congress would not have wanted all parents (married and unmarried, mother or father) subject to the one-year rule, otherwise Congress would have made one year the rule, not a one-provision exception.

But does the Court ordinarily look to groups not before the Court in creating remedies? The provisions for married parents are in 8 U.S.C. § 1401, while the provisions for unmarried parents are in § 1409. So the Court could have said the equal protection problem is in § 1409, extended the favorable rule to all, then worried about the equal protection problems as between § 1401 and § 1409 in a later case. But that still left the problem within § 1409, in which the provision for unmarried-father citizens was in (a) and for unmarried-mother citizens was in (c) and written as an exception to (a) ("Notwithstanding the provision of subsection (a) of this section . . .").

Update: From Mark Tushnet at Balkinization:

[M]y initial reaction is that that argument is incomplete, because it doesn't take account of the Court's statement that, pending a statutory revision, the "Government must ensure that the laws in question are administered in a manner free from gender-based discrimination." What could that mean? My (relatively uninformed) take is this: Where (a) the gender-based provision would have immediate legal consequences (as in triggering Morales-Santana's eligibility for removal), and (b) the law gives the government discretion in administering the law (for example, discretion to suspend removal), that discretion should be exercised in a way that would eliminate the legal effects of the gender-based discrimination. So, in short, if there's discretion to suspend Morales-Santana's removal, he should get to stay in the United States.

Mark quotes from p.2 of the slip op., the end of the Introduction. But at the end of the body of the opinion (p.28 of the slip op.), the Court says "[i]n the interim, as the Government suggests, § 1401(a)(7)'s now five-year requirement should apply prospectively to children born to unwed U.S.-citizen mothers." It seems to me that means the government is free to remove Morales-Santana, because he is not a citizen-at-birth under the applicable provision. And that provision is no longer discriminatory; the discrimination was removed by the order/agreement not to treat as citizens at birth those born to unmarried-mother citizens. The Court did not order the government to suspend Morales-Santana's removal or order the lower court to consider that. And the provisions at issue do not allow of executive discretion.