Brandeis Center Applauds U.S. Decision Permitting Jerusalem-Born Americans to Say They Were Born in Israel

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law applauds the Trump Administration’s announcement that Americans born in Jerusalem will finally be able to identify Israel on their passports as their country of birth. Brandeis Center President Alyza Lewin has long led the fight to provide Americans with this right, having argued forcefully on this issue before the U.S. Supreme Court and elsewhere.

Brandeis Center Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus commented, “It is unbelievable that it has taken so long for the U.S. State Department to drop the ridiculous notion that Jerusalem-born American citizens should be prohibited from acknowledging the truth on their passports, which is that they were born in Israel. It seems that the only people who didn’t understand this were officials at the State Department. The Brandeis Center has been fighting this fight for many years. We are very proud of Alyza Lewin for this victory in her years-long campaign, which the Brandeis Center has supported through legal advocacy as well as numerous events around the country. Lewin has been tireless in arguing for this result in appearances around the country, as well as before the U.S. Supreme Court and in Brandeis Center publications.”

Brandeis Center President Alyza Lewin commented, “Until today, US passport policy favored those who seek Israel’s demise. It permitted individuals who wish to erase any mention of the Jewish homeland from their US passport to do so, while denying citizens born in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, the ability to list their country of birth as their place of birth. We are grateful to Ambassador David Friedman for his extraordinary efforts to correct this inequity. And we thank President Trump for having the courage formally to recognize that Jerusalem is indeed in Israel.”

As the Brandeis Center has explained, Congress passed Section 214(d) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 2002, allowing American Citizens born in Jerusalem to acknowledge on their U.S. passports that they were born in Israel. Since then, the State Department surprisingly refused to enforce this law, and listing only “Jerusalem” on its passports. In an infamous judicial decision, the Supreme Court held that the executive branch could ignore the statute and upheld the State Department’s policy of listing only Jerusalem on the passports of American Citizens.

Alyza Lewin and her father, LDB Legal Advisor Nathan Lewin, had begun that case, as well as the movement to change U.S. policy on this issue, nearly 18 years ago when their firm (Lewin & Lewin) filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, DC, on behalf of an infant, Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky. Read Lewin & Lewin’s Press Release here. Menachem, the child of two American citizens, was born in Jerusalem in October 2002, three weeks after the US Congress passed Public Law No. 107-228. The new law governed US passports and birth certificates and directed that for “a United States citizen born in the city of Jerusalem, the Secretary [of State] shall, upon the request of the citizen or the citizen’s legal guardian, record the place of birth as Israel.”

President Lewin added, “For much too long American citizens born in Jerusalem who are proud of having been born in Israel, have been prevented from listing “Israel” as the place of birth on their US passports due to an antiquated, biased State Department policy. Eighteen years ago, the US Congress sought to correct this inequity by passing a law requiring the State Department to list “Israel” as the place of birth for citizens born in Jerusalem who request it. When the Executive Branch balked at following the law, my father and I brought a lawsuit to enforce the rights of American citizens like our client, Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky. It took nearly eighteen years, two trips to the US Supreme Court, President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the persistent effort of Ambassador David Friedman, to finally bring us to this day. US citizens will now carry passports that accurately identify where they were born. I am honored and deeply gratified to have been able to play a role in bringing about such an historic momentous moment.”

The Brandeis Center’s amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, co-authored by prominent attorneys Alan Gura and Eugene Kontorovich in support of the plaintiff’s wishes to have “Israel” listed as his place of birth on his passport, the Center explained that designation of one’s place of birth does not establish to formal recognition by the United States of the sovereign status over that location.