People born in American Samoa are not merely U.S. nationals, but full U.S. citizens, a federal court in Utah ruled Dec. 12.
A portion of the Nationality Act of 1940 which states that a person born to noncitizen parents in an “outlying possession” of the U.S. shall be a national but not a citizen contravenes the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah said.
John Fitisemanu, Pale and Rosavita Tuli, and the nonprofit Southern Utah Pacific Island Coalition challenged that section of the Nationality Act, as well as a State Department policy ...