Court Opinion

ID: 9641990
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:45:06.184824+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:41.529515
License: Public Domain

HART, District Judge
(dissenting).
This case is before the Court on the narrow question of whether or not the ten year durational citizenship requirement of the Foreign Service Act of 1946, 22 U.S.C. § 910 is constitutional.
The majority hold that it is not because the act fails to meet its conception of the standards under the “compelling Governmental interest” test, which they deem applies to this act.
I disagree on two grounds. I believe the correct test to be applied is the “rational basis” test. Judge Flannery feels that this test, if it applied to the act, would be met, but that the more restrictive “compelling Governmental interest” applies.
It is my view that the act meets the requirements of the “compelling Governmental interest” test.
The “compelling Governmental interest” asserted by the defendant in this case is that of choosing the best possible representatives of this nation for the conduct and execution of the foreign policy of the United States in foreign nations.
There are over 3,000 Foreign Service officers who, when abroad, serve as diplomatic and consular officers and who, when in Washington, fill many of the most responsible positions in the Department of State, The duties of the Foreign Service officer call for a wide range of abilities and attributes. For*736eign Service officers must possess strength of character and personality, combined with oral and written communications skills, knowledge of the history and culture of the American people, and an understanding of domestic and international issues. Foreign Service officers must relate United States interests and practices to the highly diverse and frequently conflicting ways of many other peoples.1
The Foreign Service officer, today, is among the most highly specialized and elite type of employee in the Federal Government.
When Congress enacted the Foreign Service Act of 1946, the aim of the act was to “improve, strengthen and expand the Foreign Service so that it may be adequate for the conduct of the foreign relations of the United States in the postwar world.” The 1946 Act was the first major reorganization of the Foreign Service following a period characterized by Congressman Vorys of Ohio, a member of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee which drafted the Bill, in this manner:
“Our Foreign Service was caught with its striped pants down in the wrong place by World War II. This bill is an attempt to correct the situation; it is based on the idea that from now on we must wage peace with the determined skill that we waged war, and that takes professionals, not political amateurs . . .”
92 Cong. Rec. 9588 (1946).
The legislative history of Section 515 of the Foreign Service Act of 1946, clearly shows that it was enacted to ensure that Foreign Service officers would be intimately acquainted with the “American way of life,” the customs, manners, and mores of American society. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs report explains:
“Section 515 is analogous to the present provision of law with regard to the subject [46 Stat. 1208 (1931)] except the requirement as to length of citizenship is reduced from 15 to 10 years. Ten years should be sufficient time to permit an individual to become acquainted with the American way of life, particularly as in most cases he must have been a resident of this country for 5 years prior to naturalization. H.Rpt. No. 2508, 79th Cong., 2nd Sess. 61 (1946).”
Both the House and Senate reports on the Act show the importance Congress placed on having the Foreign Service officers sensitive to the cultural and social developments of this country.2
Plaintiff suggests that invidious discrimination exists between native-born and naturalized citizens because residency and not duration of citizenship is a better indicator of familiarity with the United States and American culture. Plaintiff points out that it is possible for a person born of American parents in a foreign country who has never been to the United States to be eligible for employment in the Foreign Service while a naturalized citizen of less than 10 years who had alien parents and has lived in the United States continuously since the day after his birth is ineligible. To adopt the plaintiff’s argument and hypothetical example as controlling this case, the Court must make the decision Congress should have chosen residency as the eligibility requirement instead of duration of citizenship. This would be the same as saying that Congress was without the power to enact the distinction between native-born and naturalized citizens because, in the wis*737dom of the Court, persons born of American citizens abroad typically English-speaking and observing United States customs and holidays in the home are less acquainted and less able to represent the United States as Foreign Service officers than are persons who have been United States citizens for ten years. Such a substitution of judicial judgment for Congressional judgment, this Court should be unwilling to make.
This is not to say that Congress is free when legislating under one of its enumerated powers to enact unreasonable classifications. But even under the strict judicial scrutiny of the “compelling governmental interest” test of constitutionality, this Court should not strike down a classification which has an entirely legitimate objective merely because the Court, in its infinite wisdom, thinks that residency would be a better classification than the duration of citizenship devised by the legislature and the executive.
In this context, it is important to note that the purpose of Section 515 is not mere administrative convenience as in Schneider v. Rusk, nor criminal punishment, nor a deprivation of fundamental rights. Section 515 is a policy decision of Congress, concurred in by the Executive, relating to the conduct of foreign affairs. The durational citizenship requirement for naturalized citizens is an eligibility criterion, essentially the same as the requirements imposed by the Constitution in Article I. Even though the constitutional history compels no particular result in this case, it does point up the fact that distinctions between native-born and naturalized citizens were considered appropriate in certain instances in the minds of the framers of the Constitution.3 Under Article I, § 2, a naturalized citizen must wait seven years after he obtains citizenship before he is eligible to sit in the House of Representatives. For the Senate, the waiting period under Article I, § 3, is nine years. These clauses no more impose a condition of second class citizenship than Congress imposes in Section 515.
In conclusion, Congress has determined that naturalized citizens are less acquainted and less knowledgeable of the United States and American culture than native-born citizens and upon that determination, it has enacted a statute which limits eligibility to serve in the Foreign Service of the United States. This eligibility requirement is without question in pursuit of an entirely legitimate objective of compelling interest to the Government in the conduct of foreign affairs, and unless this Court decides to return to the era long past when under the rubric of due process the Federal Courts sit in review of the wisdom of Congressional decisions on national policy, then Section 515 should be upheld.

. Memorandum; Board of Examiners for the Foreign Service; BEX-3, March, 1971.

. Re: Americanization
There is perhaps no phase of Foreign Service administration about which there is more general agreement than that connected with the problems of insuring tliat Foreign Service personnel would come to the United States as often as possible to renew their knowledge of the developments in the United States and their feelings for the American way of life. H.Rpt.No.2508, 79th Cong., 2nd Sess. 10 (1946) and S.Rpt. No.1731, 79th Cong., 2nd Sess. 10 (1946).

. See: Calvin’s Case, 7 Co.Rep. la, 77 Eng.Rep. 377 (1609), which clarified the concept of citizenship and naturalization adopted by Janies Madison in debates over the Constitution; II Far-rand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 3787, 235 (1901) ; The Federalist No. 62 (J. Cooke, ed. 1961) ; 1 Annals of Congress 1112 (1790).