Yes, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (originally the 1940 Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act). From the Wikipedia page:
I’ve often wondered if I am a citizen of any particular state after having been an overseas resident for 24 years.
I vote by absentee ballot in Washington DC in presidential elections since that was the last place I resided before moving to Panama. However, that’s only for the purpose of federal elections. I don’t think I’m eligible to vote in DC elections.
I have ties to New York State, since I was born there, have bank accounts there, and use a mailing address there. But I don’t know if I would be able to qualify as a New York State citizen for any purpose.
I see someone’s never been to Texas.
No, officially not “Texas citizens,” but by popular acclamation …
This is true, but a military member can keep their new state of residence (say, Texas) even AFTER being assigned to another stateside base. So, it is not only Home of Record (HOR) or State of assignment, but really, any state in which they’ve ever had an assignment.
No, not really. While the word “citizen” is used, that’s simply because that word is found in Article III of the Constitution, which authorizes diversity jurisdiction. But, as pointed out by others, citizen = resident (and US citizen), so anyone who is a US citizen resident in South Carolina is also a citizen of South Carolina. Thus, diversity jurisdiction applies to residents of two different states (if they aren’t US citizens, they get diversity jurisdiction from the clause in the Constitution about foreign citizens).
My point was that, if being a “citizen” of South Carolina has any real meaning, it must be because I gain something of value, or suffer from some consequence which I otherwise would not have apply to me because of my status as citizen of the state. I suppose we can look at it this way: I get to vote in South Carolina because I’m a citizen of the state, not a resident, because there are residents who don’t get to vote (foreign nationals). Works for me.
Note interestingly that the Constitution does not preclude South Carolina from conferring citizenship upon non-US citizens.
A strictly logical reading of the amendment does not support this interpretation. The amendment states only that residency implies citizenship, whereas you are saying that non-residency implies non-citizenship. In the absence of other information, this looks like the fallacy of denying the antecedent. Is there any case law supporting your interpretation that holding citizenship of one state is mutually exclusive with holding citizenship of another (i.e., that dual state citizenship is prohibited)?
I thought about mentioning that but was specifically interested in the court of law.
An example of providing different protection to different citizens is this: if Indiana allows my seven year old to be out of a car seat because he is over 70lbs, while some states require him to be in a booster seat until he is eight regardless of his height or weight (let’s say for the sake of argument Ohio has this rule-- I don’t know what Ohio’s current rule is). Anyway, I drive into Ohio from Indiana with my son not in a car seat. I am not in violation of Ohio law.
Another is New York’s law allowing unmarried couple’s to adopt children together. If such a family moves to another state, the child is still the child of those two parents, regardless of laws of unmarried adoption in other states. Unless the couple was gay, not usually a problem.
This is why so many states were passing “defense of marriage” acts (“a marriage is a man and a woman,” blah, blah); they were trying to override the property of marriage whereby any marriage performed in one state was valid in all states.
Don’t be so sure about that- seat belt and child restraint laws are generally written to apply to everyone operating a vehicle in the state, not only to citizens or residents of the state. For example, NY’s law starts out " No person shall operate a motor vehicle in this state unless " and then goes on to describe seat belt and car seat rules. No exceptions for people coming from other states , any more than there would be an exemption from any other traffic rule.
And as mentioned earlier the concept applies as well to civilian federal officials who have to move for a fixed time period because of their office. So Presidents, VPs, Senators and Congressmen remain during their terms legal Resident/Citizens and registered voters of their home states, not of the District of Columbia (in the case of members of Congress, it’s an explicit requirement).
I’m going to say something along a different axis of these two good points.
I agree with the logical fallacy point. But. I wonder how true it really is that a US citizen explicitly can or can’t be a citizen of multiple states.
Several folks above talked about the benefit of citizenship. A state citizen can vote, get in-state tuition rates, etc. Flip side is a state citizen gets to pay taxes. If California for instance said that birth citizenship was for life then I could be liable for income taxes there for the last 30ish years I haven’t lived there.
Likewise voting. Perhaps when I move I gain citizenship in a new state but retain it in the old state. As such I ought to be able to vote there. Does that let me vote in federal elections twice, once in each state? The two practical alternatives are voter laws that exclude some citizens (tough for that to be constitutional) or for the concept of state citizenship to be exclusive by federal law, constitutional or otherwise; IOW you must lose any prior state citizenship exactly as and when you gain new state citizenship.
I certainly don’t know the answer to the issues I raise here. But IMO for the words “state citizen” to have any meaning at all they need to include both the burdens and the privileges of that status. The gamesmanship possibilities for both citizens and governments in a country with multiple state citizenship are big. Probably so big as to be prohibitive and hence prohibited.
Comments from people who, unlike me, have some idea what they’re talking about here?
Aside from voting, I can’t think of any benefit I get by being a “citizen” of my state rather than being a “resident”. For example, there are a whole list of ways that someone can qualify for in-state tuition rates at my state’s university, but none of them require citizenship - green card holders can get resident rates and so can some undocumented students. In fact , some of the ways don’t even require current residency.
It seems to me that for “state citizenship” to have any real meaning, it would have to involve something more than simply being a US citizen residing in a particular state. There would have to be benefits that state citizens get that mere residents don’t and responsibilities citizens have but residents don’t. It would have to be portable in the way that US and other national citizenships are - but it doesn’t seem to be. Unless I am in the military (or a spouse or dependent) , I can’t move to NJ and continue to vote in NYS elections , although I could move to Europe and still vote in Federal elections. If a US citizen moves to another country, they still must file a US tax return. If I move to NJ, I must file a NY tax return under exactly the same conditions as a NJ resident who has never lived in NY. There’s no procedure to pass my NYS citizenship on to my child who happens to be born in NJ, nor one that declares that child to be a NJ citizen even if I take him or her back to NY to live.
There’s still debate about Robert E. Lee’s decision to put his loyalty to his state, Virginia, ahead of loyalty to his American citizenship. While some argue that his decision to take command of the Confederate Army was inevitable, many prominent Virginians including General Winfield Scott remained loyal to the Union. So did many members of Lee’s own extended family, some of whom never spoke to him again. 40% of the officers from Virginia stayed with the federal forces after their state seceded.
I give you Justice Benjamin Curtis
You cannot have The United States of America without the pre-existing building blocks of the country, the states. Therefore your citizenship emanates from the state first. Because the state is in union with the several other states, you are then conferred citizenship of that union secondarily. Whether or not your state remains in said union is subject to change as a state can decide to leave the union.
The Constitution has changed quite a bit since Justice Curtis was on the Supreme Court. The last sentence, for instance, is absolutely false and has been since 1868. And given that those words are from a dissenting opinion, they don’t even necessarily represent the accepted thinking of the time.
Paging Bricker to the thread.
Just giving the UK point of view:
- I’m British (and have the passport to prove it)
- I pay local taxes in the English County where I live
I remain British wherever I travel. However if I move to a different county, I would pay their taxes.
I’m not a citizen of my county, just a resident.
That even works if you add an r to county, in your case.
Nowadays we’re citizens of the Union first. One must be born or go through a lengthy naturalization process to become a US citizen, but once that’s done you an move across state borders without restriction, obtain voting rights in a given state just be establishing residency for a set period, nd so forth. But a state gaoernment does not have hte authority to fast-track the process for for becoming a US citizen.
No. Just no. :smack:
Your first example is factually incorrect. When you drive in State B, you are subject to State B’s laws regarding driving, even if you are a resident (and thus citizen) of State A, which has different laws. To assert otherwise would cause chaos. When I was growing up, for example, right on red was not universally adopted. You couldn’t drive into a state that didn’t allow that, turn right on red, and claim that was allowed because you were from a state that let you do it. <smh>
Your second example has nothing to do with citizenship. It has to do with the “Full Faith and Credit Clause” of the U. S. Constitution (Article IV, Section 1). The act of adoption in State A is required to be given effect by State B, unless doing so violates a public policy of State B (and yes, that’s the way the Supreme Court gets around having to apply the clause when it doesn’t want to). The application to marriages has always been a touchy one; in the days of anti-miscegenation laws, inter-racial couples who traveled into states banning inter-racial marriages ran the risk of prosecution.