533 U.S. 53, 74 (2001)
Tuan Anh Nguyen was born on September 11, 1969, in Saigon, Vietnam, to a Vietnamese mother and Joseph Boulais, a United States citizen employed by a corporation in Vietnam.1
Boulais and Nguyen's mother were not married.2 After their relationship ended, Nguyen lived for a time with the family of Boulais's new Vietnamese girlfriend.3
In June 1975, when Nguyen was almost six years old, he came to the United States with his father. He became a lawful permanent resident and was raised in Texas by Boulais.4
In 1992, at age 22, Nguyen pleaded guilty in a Texas state court to two counts of sexual assault on a child and was sentenced to eight years in prison on each count.5 Three years later, the Immigration and Naturalization Service initiated deportation proceedings against him as an alien convicted of two crimes involving moral turpitude and an aggravated felony.6
At his deportation hearing Nguyen testified that he was a citizen of Vietnam. The Immigration Judge found him deportable.7 Nguyen appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. In 1998, while the appeal was pending, Boulais obtained an order of parentage from a Texas court based on DNA testing that showed a 99.98 percent probability of paternity; Nguyen was then 28 years old.8 The Board dismissed the appeal because Nguyen had failed to establish compliance with 8 U.S.C. §1409(a).9 Nguyen and Boulais appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which rejected their constitutional challenge to §1409(a).10 The Supreme Court granted certiorari.11
Whether 8 U.S.C. § 1409(a) violates the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment by imposing different requirements for the transmission of citizenship to children born abroad out of wedlock depending on whether the citizen parent is the mother or the father?12
For a gender-based classification to withstand equal protection scrutiny, it must be established that the classification serves important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed are substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.13
No. The statute satisfies heightened scrutiny because its gender distinction is based on the biological reality that a mother is present at birth while a father need not be.14
The distinction serves the important interests of assuring a biological parent-child relationship and ensuring an opportunity for the development of a real parent-child relationship.15 The means are substantially related to those ends.16
In Tuan Anh Nguyen's case, born out of wedlock in Vietnam to citizen father Joseph Boulais and a noncitizen mother, the requirements of §1409(a)(4) were not satisfied before age 18.17 The Texas court parentage order based on DNA testing occurred when Nguyen was 28 during deportation proceedings.18 The affirmative steps required of fathers but not mothers account for the absence of an inherent opportunity for relationship at birth that mothers always have, without relying on stereotypes.19
Section 1409(a) does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment.20
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Justice Thomas
Justice Scalia concurred in the judgment. He remained of the view that the Court lacks power to provide relief of the sort requested in this suit, namely conferral of citizenship on a basis other than that prescribed by Congress.21 A majority of the Justices in Miller having concluded otherwise, and a majority of the Court today proceeding on the same assumption, he reached the merits of petitioners' equal protection claims and joined the opinion of the Court.22
Joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg, And Breyer
Justice O’Connor dissented. She argued that the statute fails heightened scrutiny because the INS has not shown an exceedingly persuasive justification for the sex-based classification.23 The Court does not always explain adequately the importance of the interests that it claims to be served by the provision.24
The majority also fails carefully to consider whether the sex-based classification is being used impermissibly as a proxy for other, more germane bases of classification, and instead casually dismisses the relevance of available sex-neutral alternatives. Contrary to the majority's conclusion, the fit between the means and ends of § 1409(a)(4) is far too attenuated for the provision to survive heightened scrutiny.25 She would have reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals.26