Wash PoThe Biden administration told the Supreme Court Monday that it should not take up a case about citizenship rights for American Samoa even though advocates say it would give justices a chance to upend a series of century-old precedents that have been roundly denounced as racist.
Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the Supreme Court in a brief filed Monday that an appeals court had been right to find that Congress should make citizenship decisions about those born in territories, and the case in question, Fitisemanu v. U.S., would make a poor vehicle for reexamining a series of rulings called the Insular Cases.
Last term, justices at both ends of the court’s ideological spectrum — Neil M. Gorsuch on the right and Sonia Sotomayor on the left — criticized the rulings, which employed racist language and imperialist sentiment to find residents of some U.S. territories are not entitled to full constitutional protection, such as birthright citizenship.
