Vance V. Terrazas - Opinion of The Court

Opinion of The Court

A 5-to-4 majority of the Supreme Court held, first, that it was not enough for the government to prove "the voluntary commission of an act, such as swearing allegiance to a foreign nation, that 'is so inherently inconsistent with the continued retention of American citizenship that Congress may accord to it its natural consequences, i. e., loss of nationality.'" Rather, the court held that its 1967 ruling in Afroyim v. Rusk "emphasized that loss of citizenship requires the individual's 'assent,' . . . in addition to his voluntary commission of the expatriating act"—and that "the trier of fact must in the end conclude that the citizen not only voluntarily committed the expatriating act prescribed in the statute, but also intended to relinquish his citizenship." On this point, the Supreme Court agreed with the 7th Circuit ruling in Terrazas's favor.

The majority then turned its attention to the question of a standard of proof in loss-of-citizenship cases. Terrazas had argued—and the 7th Circuit had agreed—that the 14th Amendment, as interpreted in Afroyim, had left Congress without any constitutional authority to set the standard of proof for intent to relinquish citizenship at a level any lower than one of clear and convincing evidence. The Supreme Court majority rejected this claim and held that Congress was within its rights to specify a standard of preponderance of evidence (i.e., more likely than not) when cases alleging loss of U.S. citizenship were involved.

Finally, the Supreme Court majority upheld the validity of another aspect of the law as enacted by Congress—namely, that it was all right for the government to assume that a potentially expatriating act had been performed voluntarily, and that any claim that a person had acted under duress was up to the person involved to establish by preponderance of evidence.

The Supreme Court did not explicitly rule on whether or not Terrazas had lost his U.S. citizenship; rather, it remanded the case back to the original trial court (a Federal District Court in Illinois) for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling.

Although the court's membership was divided on the question of whether a "preponderance of evidence" standard was sufficient for establishing someone's intent to give up their U.S. citizenship, all nine justices — the five who joined in the majority opinion, and also the four who dissented (see below), unanimously agreed with the key holding in Afroyim v. Rusk that U.S. citizenship was safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment and could not be taken away by an act of Congress from a person who had not wanted to give it up.