58
Opinion of the Court
quirements for one who was born out of wedlock and abroad to a citizen father and a noncitizen mother.
Nguyen and Boulais appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, arguing that § 1409 violates equal protection by providing different rules for attainment of citizenship by children born abroad and out of wedlock depending upon whether the one parent with American citizenship is the mother or the father. The court rejected the constitutional challenge to § 1409(a). 208 F. 3d 528, 535 (2000).
The constitutionality of the distinction between unwed fathers and mothers was argued in Miller, but a majority of the Court did not resolve the issue. Four Justices, in two different opinions, rejected the challenge to the gender-based distinction, two finding the statute consistent with the Fifth Amendment, see 523 U. S., at 423 (opinion of Stevens, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J.), and two concluding that the court could not confer citizenship as a remedy even if the statute violated equal protection, see id., at 452 (Scalia, J., joined by Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). Three Justices reached a contrary result, and would have found the statute violative of equal protection. Id., at 460 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Souter and Breyer, JJ., dissenting); id., at 471 (Breyer, J., joined by Souter and Ginsburg, JJ., dissenting). Finally, two Justices did not reach the issue as to the father, having determined that the child, the only petitioner in Miller, lacked standing to raise the equal protection rights of his father. Id., at 445 (O'Connor, J., joined by Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment).
Since Miller, the Courts of Appeal have divided over the constitutionality of § 1409. Compare 208 F. 3d 528 (CA5 2000) (case below) with Lake v. Reno, 226 F. 3d 141 (CA2 2000), and United States v. Ahumada-Aguilar, 189 F. 3d 1121 (CA9 1999). We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict. 530 U. S. 1305 (2000). The father is before the Court in this case; and, as all agree he has standing to raise the constitutional claim, we now resolve it. We hold that § 1409(a)
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