US Supreme Court to Rule on Jlem Passport Status

JERUSALEM, Israel -- The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on the legality of listing Israel as the country of birth on U.S. passports of Israeli-born Jews holding dual citizenship.

Monday’s hearing involved a petition by 12-year-old Menachem Zivotofsky’s parents, who sued the State Department in 2003 for refusing to list Israel as the country of their Jerusalem-born son’s birth.

Menachem’s American-born parents, who immigrated to Israel after their first two sons were born, believe their first Israeli-born child should be recognized as such on his U.S. passport.

The same year he was born, former President George W. Bush signed legislation requiring the State Department to list Israel as the country of birth for these children. Seven years earlier, Congress had passed legislation recognizing a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Though he signed the legislation, Bush refused to follow through on the law, saying it impinged on his authority to conduct the nation’s foreign affairs. That was also reason enough to postpone moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he said.

Since its rebirth as a modern nation-state in 1948, successive U.S. administrations have refused to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. And since the Six Day War, Israelis refer to Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish state, while the Palestinians want it redrawn as it was during the 19-year Jordanian occupation.

In 2009, a State Department official told CBN News “the U.S. government does not acknowledge the sovereignty of any state over Jerusalem.”

“The final political status of Jerusalem has been in dispute since 1948 as a result of the long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict,” the official said. “The U.S. government has pursued a policy of encouraging the parties to that conflict to settle all outstanding issues including the final status of Jerusalem through peaceful negotiations between the parties with the support of the broader international community.”

On Monday, nearly six years later, the State Department presented the same argument before the court, claiming the legislation impinges on the constitutional authority of the Executive Branch to decide “whether and on what terms to recognize a foreign sovereign.”

The Supreme Court is expected to announce its ruling in June 2015, just a few months before Menachem celebrates his Bar Mitzvah on his 13th birthday, which Jewish tradition views as his entry to adulthood.