Mackenzie v. Hare
| MacKenzie v. Hare | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Argued November 11-12, 1915 Decided December 6, 1915 | |
| Full case name | MacKenzie v. Hare et al., Board of Election of San Francisco |
| Citations | 239 U.S. 299 (more) 36 S. Ct. 106 |
| Holding | |
| The Expatriation Act of 1907 validly determined that an American women's marriage to a foreign national constituted a voluntary renunciation of her citizenship. | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Laws applied | |
| Citizenship Clause, Equal Protection Clause, and Expatriation Act of 1907 | |
Mackenzie v. Hare, 239 U.S. 299 (1915), is a United States Supreme Court case that upheld Section 3 of the Expatriation Act of 1907, which dictated that all American women who voluntarily married an foreign alien renounced their American citizenship. While the statute has since been repealed, this case remains significant because of its precedent that Congress can designate acts which serve as implied voluntary renunciation of one's American citizenship.
Background
[edit]The Expatriation Act of 1868 recognized a right for US citizens to renounce their citizenship, rather than being bound by the feudal common law concept of perpetual allegiance to their home country. Section 3 of the Expatriation Act of 1907 dictated that women would lose their citizenship if they married an foreign alien under the British common law concept of coverture, which deems the legal existence of women merged into their husband upon marriage.[1]
In January 1913, after the 1911 California Proposition 4 granted women the right to vote in the state's elections, but before the 1920 Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibited sex-based denial of voting rights for US citizens, Ethel MacKenzie tried registering to vote in San Francisco, California, the state in which she was born and had always lived within.[1]
The San Francisco Board of Election Commissioners rejected her application because in August 1909, Ethel MacKenzie married Scottish singer Gordon MacKenzie. Since Gordon MacKenzie was a British citizen, the marriage was deemed a voluntary renunciation of Ethel MacKenzie's American citizenship under the Expatriation Act of 1907.[1]
MacKenzie unsuccessfully petitioned the California state courts for a writ of mandamus to compel the San Francisco Board of Election Commissioners to accept her voter registration application. After the Supreme Court of California denied MacKenzie's petition in a decision written by then-Associate Justice Lucien Shaw, she appealed its judgement to the Supreme Court of the United States.[1]
Supreme Court
[edit]Oral arguments
[edit]During oral arguments held on November 11 and 12, 1915, MacKenzie's lawyer, Wilbur T. U'Ren, argued that congressional records show that Section 3 of the Expatriation Act of 1907 was only meant to apply to women residing outside the United States. Citing various federal and state court decisions, U'Ren contended that expatriation must occur alongside voluntary or forceful removal from the country whose citizenship is being renounced. Additionally, even if Section 3 applied to MacKenzie, U'Ren claimed that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution dictated that the act was void for infringing on her birthright citizenship.[1]
Furthermore, U'Ren cited the Supreme Court's 1856 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which found that the Missouri Compromise's creation of free states that assigned African-Americans rights equivalent to those of White American citizens did not confer implied US citizenship on these Black individuals. Conversely, MacKenzie's act of marriage to an alien could not act as an implied voluntary renunciation of her birthright citizenship.[1]
San Francisco City Attorney Percy V. Long cited the Napoleonic Code and laws of the Netherlands, Ottoman Empire, and Russian Empire to argue that treating marriage as a transfer of allegiance is a widely adopted legal principle. In response, U'Ren argued that the Supreme Court's 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which found that the International law circumstances of Chinese nationals being subjects of the Emperor of China is irrelevant to upholding the birthright American citizenship of their children born within the United States, should dictate that the international law concerns of alien husbands affecting the allegiance of American women was similarly irrelevant to upholding their birthright American citizenship.[1]
Decision
[edit]In a unanimous decision issued on December 6, 1915, Associate Justice Joseph McKenna rejected all of MacKenzie's arguments, maintaining the Supreme Court of California's denial of her voter registration application. McKenna opined that for statutorily unambiguous provisions, courts should ignore arguments for alternative readings based on legislative intent on the assumption that the final text accurately reflects the views of its creators.[1]
Concurrence
[edit]Associate Justice James Clark McReynolds concurred with case's judgement but opined that the federal Supreme Court should have dismissed MacKenzie's appeal of the Supreme Court of California's decision because federal courts lacked jurisdiction to address the right to vote in state elections.[1]
Legacy
[edit]Responding to protests by suffragettes, the 1922 Cable Act amended United States nationality law to dictate that women would retain their citizenship upon marriage to an alien as long as their husband was eligible to become a citizen. Until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, males could be denied citizenship on the basis of their race, and there are still various ideological restrictions on naturalization in American law.[2]