Horace Friend v. Eric Holder, Jr.

The plaintiff in this action, Horace Friend, contends that he is, and has been since birth, a United States citizen. His long quest to obtain official recognition of that status began in 1990, when he first applied for a certificate of citizenship. Mr. Friend claimed to be a citizen under Revised Statutes § 1993, the relevant law in effect at the time of his birth in 1931. Section 1993 provided:

Mr. Friend was born in the Philippine Islands, which were then a territorial possession of the United States but were nonetheless deemed “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States” for purposes of § 1993. See Friend v. Reno, 172 F.3d 638, 642 (9th Cir.1999). Mr. Friend’s father was a United States citizen at the time of Mr. Friend’s birth, and had lived his entire life in the Philippines. Mr. Friend’s mother was a non-citizen national of the United States.

When Mr. Friend first came before this court in 1999, we rejected his citizenship claim under Revised Statutes § 1993. Friend, 172 F.3d at 648 . We held that although Mr. Friend’s father was a United States citizen, he could not transmit his citizenship to his son under § 1993 because he had never resided “in the…