Supreme Court sides with Obama in Israeli dispute
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court declined Monday to insert itself into the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by second-guessing U.S. policy on Jerusalem.
Ruling a few months after an open feud between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the justices refused to allow Americans born in Jerusalem to have their passports changed to reflect Israel as their birthplace, as Congress demanded over a decade ago.
In denying the challenge waged by the Jewish parents of Menachem Zivotofsky, 12, the court heeded the State Department warning that a simple passport alteration could “provoke uproar throughout the Arab and Muslim world.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the 6-3 decision for the court, which needed more than seven months after oral arguments in early November to decide the congressional law was unconstitutional.
“The power to recognize or decline to recognize a foreign state and its territorial bounds resides in the president alone,” Kennedy said, citing examples from the French Revolution in 1793 to President Carter’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1979. “Recognition is an act with immediate and powerful significance for international relations, so the president’s position must be clear. Congress cannot require him to contradict his own statement regarding a determination of formal recognition.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito dissented. They sided with Congress, which passed a law in 2002 allowing Americans born in Jerusalem to have Israel listed as their place of birth on their passports.
“Today’s decision is a first,” Roberts said. “Never before has this court accepted a president’s direct defiance of an act of Congress in the field of foreign affairs.” He said the court was bowing to fears that the congressional law could be misinterpreted as changing U.S. foreign policy, rather than simply allowing citizens to define their place of birth.
Scalia argued that the ruling establishes “a principle that the nation must have a single foreign policy, which elevates efficiency above the test and structure of the Constitution.” He said that would “systematically favor the president at the expense of Congress.”
Justice Clarence Thomas agreed that Congress cannot circumvent the president on passports but argued that the law can be applied to consular reports of birth abroad.