Government upbraided in stripped citizenship case
Supreme Court justices weigh cost of a lie by Serbian immigrant, giving her another chance
Not all lies are equal, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday. That could be welcome news to a Serbian immigrant whose U.S. citizenship was stripped because she lied on her naturalization papers.
In a case that produced outrage from some justices on the court’s last day of oral arguments in April, the court ruled unanimously that a lie told in the course of gaining citizenship can be used against the applicant only if it was relevant to the reward.
The unanimous verdict, written by Justice Elena Kagan, gives Divna Maslenjak a chance to regain the citizenship she lost after she lied about her husband’s military record.
Maslenjak lied when applying for refugee status in the United States during the 1990s, both about her husband’s service in a Bosnian militia unit implicated in war crimes and other matters. She was convicted, sentenced to two years’ probation and had her naturalization revoked, a conviction upheld by a federal appeals court. She was deported in October while her case was pending.
During oral arguments, the gulf between her lie and her gain astonished several of the justices. Chief Justice John Roberts wondered if lying about driving above the speed limit would be enough. Kagan wondered if lying about one’s weight would qualify.
Allowing such irrelevant lies to be held against an immigrant seeking citizenship “would open the door to a world of strange consequences,” Kagan said in issuing her decision Thursday.
“Suppose, for reasons of embarrassment or what-have-you, a person concealed her membership in an online support group or failed to disclose a prior speeding violation,” Kagan wrote. “Under the government’s view, a prosecutor could scour her paperwork and bring a charge on that meager basis, even many years after she became a citizen.
“That would give prosecutors nearly limitless leverage — and afford newly naturalized Americans precious little security.”
Whether Maslenjak’s lies were harmless or helped her gain citizenship will be left for lower courts to determine. The Supreme Court merely gives her another chance to win her case.