United States v. Flores-Villar

Ruben Flores-Villar (defendant) was born in Mexico to a 16-year-old U.S. citizen father and a non-citizen mother, and moved to the United States with his father as an infant; he was deported at age 22 and later charged with illegally reentering after deportation, defending himself on the ground that he was actually a U.S. citizen. Under the governing federal statute, an unwed U.S. citizen father transmitting citizenship to a foreign-born child needed to have lived in the United States for at least five years after turning fourteen, while an unwed U.S. citizen mother in the same situation needed only one year of prior U.S. residency. Because Flores-Villar's father was only sixteen at his birth, he could not have met the five-year post-fourteen residency requirement, so Flores-Villar was not a citizen under the statute. He challenged the law as violating equal protection under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause.