Maslenjak v. United States
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 22, 2017 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Decided
- June 22, 2017
- Term
- October Term 2016
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Kagan
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court. A federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a), makes it a crime to "knowingly procure[ ], contrary to law, the naturalization of any person." And when someone is convicted under § 1425(a) of unlawfully procuring her own naturalization, her citizenship is automatically revoked. See 8 U.S.C. § 1451(e). In this case, we consider what the Government must prove to obtain such a conviction. We hold that the Government must establish that an illegal act by the defendant played some role in her acquisition of citizenship. When the illegal act is a false statement, that means demonstrating that the defendant lied about facts that would have mattered to an immigration official, because they would have justified denying naturalization or would predictably have led to other facts warranting that result. I Petitioner Divna Maslenjak is an ethnic Serb who resided in Bosnia during the 1990's, when a civil war between Serbs and Muslims divided the new country. In 1998, she and her family (her husband Ratko Maslenjak and their two children) met with an American immigration official to seek refugee status in the United States. Interviewed under oath, Maslenjak explained that the family feared persecution in Bosnia from both sides of the national rift. Muslims, she said, would mistreat them because of their ethnicity. And Serbs, she testified, would…
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