Afroyim V. Rusk - Subsequent Developments

Subsequent Developments

The Afroyim decision stated that no one with United States citizenship could be involuntarily deprived of that citizenship. Nevertheless, the Court distinguished a 1971 case, Rogers v. Bellei, holding in this newer case that individuals who had acquired citizenship via jus sanguinis, through birth outside the United States to an American parent or parents, could still risk loss of citizenship in various ways, since their citizenship (unlike Afroyim's citizenship) was the result of federal statutes rather than the Citizenship Clause. The statutory provision whereby Bellei lost his citizenship—a U.S. residency requirement which he had failed to satisfy in his youth—was repealed by Congress in 1978; the foreign voting provision, already without effect since Afroyim, was repealed at the same time.

Although Afroyim appeared to rule out any involuntary revocation of a person's citizenship, the government continued for the most part to pursue loss-of-citizenship cases when an American had acted in a way believed to imply an intent to give up citizenship—especially when an American had become a naturalized citizen of another country. In a 1980 case, however—Vance v. Terrazas—the Supreme Court ruled that intent to relinquish citizenship needed to be proved by itself, and not simply inferred from an individual's having voluntarily performed an action designated by Congress as being incompatible with an intent to keep one's citizenship.

The concept of dual citizenship, which previously had been strongly opposed by the U.S. government, has become more accepted in the years since Afroyim. In 1980, the administration of President Jimmy Carter concluded that the Bancroft Treaties—a series of bilateral agreements, formulated between 1868 and 1937, which provided for automatic loss of citizenship upon foreign naturalization of a U.S. citizen—were no longer enforceable, due in part to Afroyim, and gave notice terminating these treaties. In 1990, the State Department adopted new guidelines for evaluating potential loss-of-citizenship cases, under which the government now assumes in almost all situations that Americans do not in fact intend to give up their citizenship unless they explicitly indicate to U.S. officials that this is their intention. As explained by Peter J. Spiro, "In the long run, Afroyim's vision of an absolute right to retain citizenship has been largely, if quietly, vindicated. As a matter of practice, it is now virtually impossible to lose American citizenship without formally and expressly renouncing it."

While acknowledging that "American citizenship enjoys strong protection against loss under Afroyim and Terrazas", retired journalist Henry S. Matteo suggested that "It would have been more equitable ... had the Supreme Court relied on the Eighth Amendment, which adds a moral tone as well as a firmer constitutional basis, than the Fourteenth." Matteo also said that "Under Afroyim there is a lack of balance between rights and protections on one hand, and obligations and responsibilities on the other, all four elements of which have been an integral part of the concept of citizenship, as history shows." Political science professor P. Allan Dionisopoulos wrote that "it is doubtful that any created a more complex problem for the United States than Afroyim v. Rusk", a decision which he believed had "since become a source of embarrassment for the United States in its relationships with the Arab world" because of the way it facilitated dual U.S.–Israeli citizenship and participation by Americans in Israel's armed forces.

After his Supreme Court victory, Afroyim divided his time between West Brighton (Staten Island, New York) and the Israeli city of Safed until his death on May 19, 1984 in West Brighton.