Nebraska students might get religious release from school time, as package advances
St. Mary Catholic Church's Ten Commandments monument across the street from the Nebraska State Capitol on Feb. 28. 2025. (Juan Salinas II/Nebraska Examiner)
LINCOLN — God and religion 'may' have a new path into Nebraska's public schools after the Education Committee on Friday sent a package to the legislative floor that includes a revamped 'release time' proposal.
The package's most controversial part was its inclusion of State Sen. Loren Lippincott's Legislative Bill 550, which would let students be excused during the school day for off-site religious instruction and coursework.
Christian education organization Lifewise Academy, with ties to the populist right, is lobbying for similar bills in conservative-led states nationally. Lippincott has acknowledged the group's influence on the issue.
He was pleased that the bill made it out of committee Friday with 'a few minor changes' and said he hoped lawmakers would give it a chance. Amendments adopted Friday essentially watered it down to existing law.
'We'll see what happens once it gets on the floor,' said Lippincott, of Central City.
Committee members had battled back and forth for weeks on whether to include Lippincott's proposal in a bill largely built around Omaha State Sen. Ashlei Spivey's former LB 440 to boost paid leave for teachers.
The Spivey bill would give teachers up to three weeks of paid leave to deal with significant life events and pay for it using a new payroll fee on teacher salaries to cover the costs of paying long-term substitutes. The fee also would help pay for special education teacher recruitment and retention.
The importance of that underlying bill to teachers, now in LB 306, made unusual allies of the Nebraska State Education Association and some of the Legislature's members who want more Christianity in schools. Also part of the deal was the Legislature's Retirement Systems Committee.
Tim Royers, president of the NSEA, had no immediate comment on the bill's advancement. He had said earlier Friday that his union was only willing to accept Lippincott's 'release time' bill if allowing students to leave school for religious instruction was optional, not required.
As such, the committee amended Lippincott's part of the package to change its 'shall' language to a 'may' on the requirement that schools let students leave. Other changes clarified that they had to leave for at least 42 minutes and that they couldn't miss core classes.
The three amendments to Lippincott's proposal are a big reason why the bill secured at least six votes to get out of committee — and might get a seventh. It needed five to advance to the legislative floor.
Republican State Sens. Dave Murman of Glenvil, the chair, Jana Hughes of Seward, the vice chair, Dan Lonowski of Hastings, Glen Meyer of Pender and Rita Sanders of Bellevue all voted to advance the package.
Democratic State Sen. Margo Juarez of South Omaha voted yes as well. The lone no vote came from progressive nonpartisan State Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha, who warned about the door to more religious bills in schools.
Hunt acknowledged that Lippincott's bill does not change the process for students leaving under current law but endorses what she called 'missionary work.'
She said the organization behind the bill, Lifewise, brings a bus for students and entices them with a popcorn party or other incentives to grow membership. Students left behind feel pressured, she said.
Lonowski said he didn't see Lifewise getting involved in Nebraska, but that he might be wrong. Hunt said he was wrong. Jesse Vohwinkel, LifeWise Academy's Vice President of Growth, testified in favor of Lippincott's bill during its public hearing in February.
Lonowski said the bill was pragmatic, as public schools are losing students when families want religion. Murman said it gives parents and school boards 'a little bit of cover' to get the programs off the ground.
Juarez said if other religions were not allowed, she would oppose the bill. She noted Satanists have already said they would use provisions of Lippincott's original bill if it required schools to open doors to groups.
Given the time constraints of budget bills and the likelihood of the education bill facing a filibuster, Speaker John Arch will have to decide whether scheduling the bill is worth the floor time.
Arch said late Friday that he would need to wait until the bill is officially reported out of committee and he has a chance to review it to determine whether to schedule it. The committee was holding open its vote until Monday to let State Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln weigh in.
Examiner reporters Zach Wendling and Juan Salinas II contributed to this report.
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Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
A U.S. territory's colonial history emerges in disputes over voting and citizenship
WHITTIER, Alaska — Squeezed between glacier-packed mountains and Alaska's Prince William Sound, the cruise-ship stop of Whittier is isolated enough that it's reachable by just a single road, through a long, one-lane tunnel that vehicles share with trains. It's so small that nearly all its 260 residents live in the same 14-story condo building. But Whittier also is the unlikely crossroads of two major currents in American politics: fighting over what it means to be born on U.S. soil and false claims by President Trump and others that noncitizen voter fraud is widespread. In what experts describe as an unprecedented case, Alaska prosecutors are pursuing felony charges against 11 residents of Whittier, most of them related to one another, saying they falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering or trying to vote. The defendants were all born in American Samoa, an island cluster in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. It's the only U.S. territory where residents are not automatically granted citizenship by virtue of having been born on American soil, as the Constitution dictates. Instead, by a quirk of geopolitical history, they are considered 'U.S. nationals' — a distinction that gives them certain rights and obligations while denying them others. American Samoans are entitled to U.S. passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for the Selective Service. They can vote in local elections in American Samoa but cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections. Those who wish to become citizens can do so, but the process costs hundreds of dollars and can be cumbersome. 'To me, I'm an American. I was born an American on U.S. soil,' said firefighter Michael Pese, one of those charged in Whittier. 'American Samoa has been U.S. soil, U.S. jurisdiction, for 125 years. According to the supreme law of the land, that's my birthright.' The status has created confusion in other states as well. In Oregon, officials inadvertently registered nearly 200 American Samoan residents to vote when they got their driver's licenses under the state's motor-voter law. Of those, 10 cast ballots in an election, according to the Oregon secretary of state's office. Officials there determined the residents had not intended to break the law and no crime was committed. In Hawaii, one resident who was born in American Samoa, Sai Timoteo, ran for the state Legislature in 2018 before learning she wasn't allowed to hold public office or vote. She had always considered it her civic duty to vote, and the form on the voting materials had one box to check: 'U.S. Citizen/U.S. National.' 'I checked that box my entire life,' she said. She also avoided charges, and Hawaii subsequently changed its form to make it more clear. Amid the storm of executive orders issued by Trump in the early days of his second term was one that sought to redefine birthright citizenship by barring it for children of parents who are in the U.S. unlawfully. Another would overhaul how federal elections are run, among other changes requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship. Courts so far have blocked both orders. The Constitution says that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.' It also leaves the administration of elections to the states. The case in Whittier began with Pese's wife, Tupe Smith. After the couple moved to Whittier in 2018, Smith began volunteering at the Whittier Community School, where nearly half of the 55 students were American Samoan — many of them her nieces and nephews. She would help the kids with their English, tutor them in reading and cook them Samoan dishes. In 2023, a seat on the regional school board came open and she ran for it. She was the only candidate and won with about 95% of the vote. One morning a few weeks later, as she was making her two children breakfast, state troopers came knocking. They asked about her voting history. She explained that she knew she wasn't allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections, but thought she could vote in local or state races. She said she checked a box affirming that she was a U.S. citizen at the instruction of elections workers because there was no option to identify herself as a U.S. national, court records say. The troopers arrested her and drove her to a women's prison near Anchorage. She was released that day after her husband paid bail. 'When they put me in cuffs, my son started crying,' Smith said. About 10 months later, troopers returned to Whittier and issued court summonses to Pese, eight other relatives and one man who was not related but came from the same American Samoa village as Pese. One of Smith's attorneys, Neil Weare, grew up in another U.S. territory, Guam, and is the co-founder of the Washington-based Right to Democracy Project, whose mission is 'confronting and dismantling the undemocratic colonial framework governing people in U.S. territories.' He suggested the prosecutions are aimed at 'low-hanging fruit' in the absence of evidence that illegal immigrants frequently cast ballots in U.S. elections. Even state-level investigations have found voting by noncitizens to be exceptionally rare. 'There is no question that Ms. Smith lacked an intent to mislead or deceive a public official in order to vote unlawfully when she checked 'U.S. citizen' on voter registration materials,' he wrote in a brief to the Alaska Court of Appeals, after a lower court judge declined to dismiss the charges. Prosecutors say her false claim of citizenship was intentional, and her claim to the contrary was undercut by the clear language on the voter application forms she filled out in 2020 and 2022. The forms said that if the applicant did not answer yes to being over 18 years old and a U.S. citizen, 'do not complete this form, as you are not eligible to vote.' The unique situation of American Samoans dates to the 19th century, when the U.S. and European powers were seeking to expand their colonial and economic interests in the South Pacific. The U.S. Navy secured the use of Pago Pago Harbor in eastern Samoa as a coal-refueling station for military and commercial vessels, while Germany sought to protect its coconut plantations in western Samoa. Eventually the archipelago was divided, with the western islands becoming the independent nation of Samoa and the eastern ones becoming American Samoa, overseen by the Navy. The leaders of American Samoa spent much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries arguing that its people should be U.S. citizens. Birthright citizenship was eventually afforded to residents of other U.S. territories — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Congress considered it for American Samoa in the 1930s, but declined. Some lawmakers cited financial concerns during the Great Depression while others expressed patently racist objections, according to a 2020 article in the American Journal of Legal History. Supporters of automatic citizenship say it would particularly benefit the estimated 150,000 to 160,000 nationals who live in the states, many of them in California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Alaska. 'We pay taxes, we do exactly the same as everybody else that are U.S. citizens,' Smith said. 'It would be nice for us to have the same rights as everybody here in the states.' But many in American Samoa eventually soured on the idea, fearing that extending birthright citizenship would jeopardize its customs — including the territory's communal land laws. Island residents could be dispossessed by land privatization, not unlike what happened in Hawaii, said Siniva Bennett, board chair of the Samoa Pacific Development Corporation, a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit. 'We've been able to maintain our culture, and we haven't been divested from our land like a lot of other indigenous people in the U.S.,' Bennett said. In 2021, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to extend automatic citizenship to those born in American Samoa, saying it would be wrong to force citizenship on those who don't want it. The Supreme Court declined to review the decision. Several jurisdictions across the country, including San Francisco and the District of Columbia, allow people who are not citizens to vote in certain local elections. Tafilisaunoa Toleafoa, with the Pacific Community of Alaska, said the situation has been so confusing that her organization reached out to the Alaska Division of Elections in 2021 and 2022 to ask whether American Samoans could vote in state and local elections. Neither time did it receive a direct answer, she said. 'People were telling our community that they can vote as long as you have your voter registration card and it was issued by the state,' she said. Finally, last year, Carol Beecher, head of the state Division of Elections, sent Toleafoa's group a letter saying American Samoans are not eligible to vote in Alaska elections. But by then, the voting forms had been signed. 'It is my hope that this is a lesson learned, that the state of Alaska agrees that this could be something that we can administratively correct,' Toleafoa said. 'I would say that the state could have done that instead of prosecuting community members.' Thiessen, Bohrer and Johnson write for the Associated Press. Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska, and Johnson from Seattle. Claire Rush in Portland and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this report.
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘We made a mistake': Pillen accepts responsibility for failed vetoes to Nebraska budget
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen. Dec. 10, 2024. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner) LINCOLN — Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen has accepted responsibility for mishandled line-item vetoes to the state's next two-year budget while reiterating that many of the suggested cuts will be reconsidered in 2026. Pillen, speaking with the Nebraska Examiner after the Legislature adjourned for the year, said the veto process includes 'human beings' in his office, the Clerk of the Legislature's Office and the Secretary of State's Office. On May 21, his office delivered Legislative Bill 261 and LB 264 with line-item vetoes to the Secretary of State's Office, which is the right place for the bills to go when the Legislature is out of session, but not to the Clerk of the Legislature's Office on the other side of the Capitol, which is where bills must be returned when senators are in session. The Governor's Office says LB 261 was line-item vetoed at 1:08 p.m. on May 21 and LB 264 at 1:10 p.m. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State's Office said the bills were delivered to that office around 5 p.m. the same day. The Legislature did receive a separate letter from Pillen the night of May 21 detailing the line-item vetoes, as well as a copy of the bills with the inscribed vetoes, but lawmakers contended the next day that a line-item veto is constitutional only with the inscribed vetoes on the actual bills. Those bills remained at the Secretary of State's Office until morning. The Nebraska Constitution requires vetoes to be returned within five days of being presented to the governor, excluding Sundays. The bills passed May 15 and went to Pillen's office at 1:12 p.m., so the deadline was by the end-of-day May 21. Pillen said the mistake on the night of May 21 was 'a miscommunication on where it was supposed to go.' Pillen was in Washington, D.C., the following day, for a 'Make America Healthy Again' event at the White House. 'Bottom line: We made a mistake. I'd have thought, because we all work together, that a flag would have been thrown and said, 'Hey, let's do X,' but there wasn't, and then the glass of milk was spilled the next morning,' Pillen told the Examiner. The intended vetoes targeted $14.5 million to the state's general fund and $18 million in repurposed cash funds for improvements at Lake McConaughy. He sought to save $14.5 million that the Legislature's budget aimed to use from the state's 'rainy day' cash reserve by trimming spending — $152 million from the rainy day fund went to help balance the budget. The Nebraska Supreme Court, which faced about $12 million of Pillen's proposed general fund reductions (83%), has said the loss of those funds could close vital court services. This was Pillen's second two-year budget — he vetoed $38.5 million in general fund spending in 2023 for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 fiscal years. Lawmakers restored about $850,000 of the trims. Pillen, Secretary of State Bob Evnen and Speaker of the Legislature John Arch have pledged to clarify the line-item veto process for the budget ahead of 2026, and they've agreed that the suggested reductions should be considered when the budget is adjusted next year. Arch has said that to his knowledge, nothing like this had happened before. Pillen, whose office now insists the matter is resolved, said, 'As I told our team, we look in the mirror, we accept responsibilities. I've not met a human that doesn't make a mistake yet.' Pillen and his staff have declined to detail exactly what happened the night of May 21. Rani Taborek-Potter, a spokesperson for Evnen, said no one from the Secretary of State's Office delivered the actual LB 261 and LB 264 with the line-item vetoes to the Clerk of the Legislature's Office, 'nor is it our office's responsibility to do so.' 'When bills are vetoed by the Governor, the vetoed bills are delivered directly to the Clerk of the Legislature's Office by the Governor's office, as was the case for LB 319 and LB 287 to the best of our knowledge,' Taborek-Potter told the Examiner, referring to the two other bills vetoed this session related to expanding SNAP benefit eligibility and fighting bedbugs in Omaha. Taborek-Potter confirmed the Governor's Office delivered the budget bills to the administrative assistant in the Secretary of State's Office just before 5 p.m. on May 21. The Examiner on May 23 requested all records and communications regarding the line-item vetoes from when the budget bills passed May 15 to the date of the records request. The request sought texts, emails and digital messages. It also asked for communications within the executive branch and between Pillen's office and the legislative branch, including staff and state senators. Documents provided in response indicated that Pillen's veto letter detailing his objections was ready by 6:05 p.m., when the state budget administrator, Neil Sullivan, sent it to Pillen's staff. Around 6:27 p.m., Kenny Zoeller, director of the governor's Policy Research Office, the main research and lobbying arm for Pillen, confirmed the letter among gubernatorial staff. 'We are handing this off back to the Legislature POST adjournment,' Zoeller wrote of next steps. 'I will text when it's handed off.' Laura Strimple, the governor's primary spokesperson, sent a draft news release regarding the vetoes at 8:21 p.m. to Sullivan. It was sent to reporters around 11:23 p.m. The Legislature adjourned at 9:20 p.m., and a reporter could see legislative staff discussing the veto letter. Through much of the day on May 22, legislative leadership met off the floor, including Arch. Several emerged just before adjournment at 2:37 p.m. when Arch announced the vetoes could not be accepted and that the Legislature had concluded they were constitutionally improper. Some members of the Appropriations Committee hugged, threw fists in the air and smiled after. Pillen's spokesperson, Strimple, sent a statement to reporters at 4:48 p.m. stating it was the governor's position that Pillen 'clearly took the legally required steps to exercise his veto authority by surrendering physical possession and the power to approve or reject the bills.' She said the Governor's Office would consult with the Attorney General's Office and other counsel. The Policy Research Office, executive branch budget staff and other members of the governor's staff met around 5 p.m. on May 22. Strimple sent her statement on the governor's position to all members of the governor's staff at 5:23 p.m., then to lawmakers at 5:53 p.m. On May 27, the next legislative day, Pillen, Arch and Evnen released their joint statement around 2:54 p.m., ending the possible constitutional dispute and returning to their respective corners, with no one taking blame for the situation until Pillen spoke with reporters this week. Pillen's office asserts that it searched texts and digital messages as part of the public records request but found no responsive records, including from Zoeller, who had pledged to text after delivering the veto letter in one of the emails. The Governor's Office provided no records reflecting communications with the legislative branch. None of the records indicate what happened to the bills after being delivered to Evnen's office. Evnen, speaking with the Examiner on Friday, reiterated that the Secretary of State's Office's role with legislation is to file it, and 'when it's brought to our office and we're asked to file it, that's what we do.' 'There's a certain amount of confusion, really between the legislative branch and the Governor's Office, about those line-item vetoes, and I think that what we will do is sit down and talk through together how that will be handled. That's a really good thing to do,' he said. Multiple lawmakers beyond Arch have quietly teased the suggestion with the Examiner, asking how much clearer the process can be. Asked if there was a reason the original bills in the Secretary of State's Office by about 5 p.m. could not be delivered by midnight on May 21, Evnen said: 'You would have to ask the Governor's Office.' Strimple, asked about the remaining timeline on May 21 and May 22, said that with the Arch-Evnen-Pillen joint statement, 'The matter is concluded.' One of the top targets of Gov. Jim Pillen's intended line-item vetoes to the state's budget bills was about $12 million in spending earmarked for the Nebraska Supreme Court. Corey Steel, state court administrator for Nebraska, told lawmakers that the line-item vetoes to the courts could eliminate various services, including three problem-solving courts in Lancaster and Sarpy Counties, a drug court in Gov. Jim Pillen's home of Platte County, transition living reimbursements for certain adults and non-statutory services for juveniles on probation. Pillen told the Examiner that while he has the 'utmost respect' for the separation of powers between Nebraska's branches of government, he believes each one must look at government differently. He said the courts have significantly increased spending and have money sitting around. Steel, as well as Chief Justice Jeffrey Funke, have said that position isn't accurate and that increased spending has been in part due to legislation that came without new funds. The judicial branch leaders have said that the 'money' held in various funds is now exhausted. However, Pillen said he's not backing down and that the reductions will be considered in 2026. 'We have to be fiscally responsible,' Pillen said, 'and that's all we're asking.' — Zach Wendling SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
21 hours ago
A US territory's colonial history emerges in state disputes over voting and citizenship
WHITTIER, Alaska -- Squeezed between glacier-packed mountains and Alaska's Prince William Sound, the cruise-ship stop of Whittier is isolated enough that it's reachable by just a single road, through a long, one-lane tunnel that vehicles share with trains. It's so small that nearly all its 260 residents live in the same 14-story condo building. But Whittier also is the unlikely crossroads of two major currents in American politics: fighting over what it means to be born on U.S. soil and false claims by President Donald Trump and others that noncitizen voter fraud is widespread. In what experts describe as an unprecedented case, Alaska prosecutors are pursuing felony charges against 11 residents of Whittier, most of them related to one another, saying they falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering or trying to vote. The defendants were all born in American Samoa, an island cluster in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. It's the only U.S. territory where residents are not automatically granted citizenship by virtue of having been born on American soil, as the Constitution dictates. Instead, by a quirk of geopolitical history, they are considered 'U.S. nationals' — a distinction that gives them certain rights and obligations while denying them others. American Samoans are entitled to U.S. passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for the Selective Service. They can vote in local elections in American Samoa but cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections. Those who wish to become citizens can do so, but the process costs hundreds of dollars and can be cumbersome. 'To me, I'm an American. I was born an American on U.S. soil,' said firefighter Michael Pese, one of those charged in Whittier. 'American Samoa has been U.S. soil, U.S. jurisdiction, for 125 years. According to the supreme law of the land, that's my birthright.' The status has created confusion in other states, as well. In Oregon, officials inadvertently registered nearly 200 American Samoan residents to vote when they got their driver's licenses under the state's motor-voter law. Of those, 10 cast ballots in an election, according to the Oregon Secretary of State's office. Officials there determined the residents had not intended to break the law and no crime was committed. In Hawaii, one resident who was born in American Samoa, Sai Timoteo, ran for the state Legislature in 2018 before learning she wasn't allowed to hold public office or vote. She had always considered it her civic duty to vote, and the form on the voting materials had one box to check: 'U.S. Citizen/U.S. National.' 'I checked that box my entire life,' she said. She also avoided charges, and Hawaii subsequently changed its form to make it more clear. Amid the storm of executive orders issued by Trump in the early days of his second term was one that sought to redefine birthright citizenship by barring it for children of parents who are in the U.S. unlawfully. Another would overhaul how federal elections are run, among other changes requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship. Courts so far have blocked both orders. The Constitution says that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.' It also leaves the administration of elections to the states. The case in Whittier began with Pese's wife, Tupe Smith. After the couple moved to Whittier in 2018, Smith began volunteering at the Whittier Community School, where nearly half of the 55 students were American Samoan — many of them her nieces and nephews. She would help the kids with their English, tutor them in reading and cook them Samoan dishes. In 2023, a seat on the regional school board came open and she ran for it. She was the only candidate and won with about 95% of the vote. One morning a few weeks later, as she was making her two children breakfast, state troopers came knocking. They asked about her voting history. She explained that she knew she wasn't allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections, but thought she could vote in local or state races. She said she checked a box affirming that she was a U.S. citizen at the instruction of elections workers because there was no option to identify herself as a U.S. national, court records say. The troopers arrested her and drove her to a women's prison near Anchorage. She was released that day after her husband paid bail. 'When they put me in cuffs, my son started crying," Smith told The Associated Press. "He told their dad that he don't want the cops to take me or to lock me up.' About 10 months later, troopers returned to Whittier and issued court summonses to Pese, eight other relatives and one man who was not related but came from the same American Samoa village as Pese. One of Smith's attorneys, Neil Weare, grew up in another U.S. territory, Guam, and is the co-founder of the Washington-based Right to Democracy Project, whose mission is 'confronting and dismantling the undemocratic colonial framework governing people in U.S. territories.' He suggested the prosecutions are aimed at 'low-hanging fruit' in the absence of evidence that illegal immigrants frequently cast ballots in U.S. elections. Even state-level investigations have found voting by noncitizens to be exceptionally rare. 'There is no question that Ms. Smith lacked an intent to mislead or deceive a public official in order to vote unlawfully when she checked 'U.S. citizen' on voter registration materials,' he wrote in a brief to the Alaska Court of Appeals last week, after a lower court judge declined to dismiss the charges. Prosecutors say her false claim of citizenship was intentional, and her claim to the contrary was undercut by the clear language on the voter application forms she filled out in 2020 and 2022. The forms said that if the applicant did not answer yes to being over 18 years old and a U.S. citizen, 'do not complete this form, as you are not eligible to vote.' The unique situation of American Samoans dates to the 19th century, when the U.S. and European powers were seeking to expand their colonial and economic interests in the South Pacific. The U.S. Navy secured the use of Pago Pago Harbor in eastern Samoa as a coal-refueling station for military and commercial vessels, while Germany sought to protect its coconut plantations in western Samoa. Eventually the archipelago was divided, with the western islands becoming the independent nation of Samoa and the eastern ones becoming American Samoa, overseen by the Navy. The leaders of American Samoa spent much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries arguing that its people should be U.S. citizens. Birthright citizenship was eventually afforded to residents of other U.S. territories — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Congress considered it for American Samoa in the 1930s, but declined. Some lawmakers cited financial concerns during the Great Depression while others expressed patently racist objections, according to a 2020 article in the American Journal of Legal History. Supporters of automatic citizenship say it would particularly benefit the estimated 150,000 to 160,000 nationals who live in the states, many of them in California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Alaska. 'We pay taxes, we do exactly the same as everybody else that are U.S. citizens,' Smith said. 'It would be nice for us to have the same rights as everybody here in the states.' But many in American Samoa eventually soured on the idea, fearing that extending birthright citizenship would jeopardize its customs — including the territory's communal land laws. Island residents could be dispossessed by land privatization, not unlike what happened in Hawaii, said Siniva Bennett, board chair of the Samoa Pacific Development Corporation, a Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit. 'We've been able to maintain our culture, and we haven't been divested from our land like a lot of other indigenous people in the U.S.,' Bennett said. In 2021, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to extend automatic citizenship to those born in American Samoa, saying it would be wrong to force citizenship on those who don't want it. The Supreme Court declined to review the decision. Several jurisdictions across the country, including San Francisco and the District of Columbia, allow people who are not citizens to vote in certain local elections. Tafilisaunoa Toleafoa, with the Pacific Community of Alaska, said the situation has been so confusing that her organization reached out to the Alaska Division of Elections in 2021 and 2022 to ask whether American Samoans could vote in state and local elections. Neither time did it receive a direct answer, she said. 'People were telling our community that they can vote as long as you have your voter registration card and it was issued by the state,' she said. Finally, last year, Carol Beecher, the head of the state Division of Elections, sent Toleafoa's group a letter saying American Samoans are not eligible to vote in Alaska elections. But by then, the voting forms had been signed. 'It is my hope that this is a lesson learned, that the state of Alaska agrees that this could be something that we can administratively correct,' Toleafoa said. 'I would say that the state could have done that instead of prosecuting community members.'
