Supreme Court rejects ‘born in Jerusalem’ passport law

WASHINGTON – Siding with the White House in a foreign-policy power struggle with Congress, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that Americans born in the disputed city of Jerusalem can’t list Israel as their birthplace on passports.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court said Congress overstepped its bounds when it approved the passport law in 2002. The case mixed a dispute between Congress and the president with the thorny politics of the volatile Middle East.

The ruling ended a 12-year-old lawsuit by a Jerusalem-born American, Menachem Zivotofsky, and his U.S.-citizen parents.

The law the court struck down Monday would have forced the State Department to alter its long-standing policy of not listing Israel as the birthplace for Jerusalem-born Americans. The policy is part of the government’s refusal to recognize any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem until Israelis and Palestinians resolve its status through negotiations.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion that the president has the exclusive power to recognize foreign nations, and that determining what a passport says is part of that power.

“Put simply, the nation must have a single policy regarding which governments are legitimate in the eyes of the United States and which are not,” Kennedy wrote. “Recognition is a topic on which the nation must speak with one voice. That voice must be the president’s.”

Justice Antonin Scalia challenged Kennedy’s analysis in a vigorous dissent that Scalia summarized from the bench. “Who says so?” Scalia said. “The text and structure of the Constitution divide responsibility for foreign policy.” Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito joined the dissent.

In a separate opinion, Roberts cast the court’s decision as dangerously groundbreaking. “The court takes the perilous step – for the first time in our history – of allowing the president to defy an act of Congress in the field of foreign affairs,” he wrote.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, said, “It is a clear message to the Israeli government that its decisions and measures in occupying and annexing Jerusalem are illegal and void and that it should immediately stop these measures because it’s a clear violation of the international law,” Erekat said.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said Israel does not comment on rulings by foreign courts.