areas. Since the annexation of the territory in 1900, the people of American Samoa have been denied U.S. citizenship. Instead, they remain the last to be classified as U.S. nationals. Like citizens, nationals are part of the American polity, but they do not have all of the same rights and privileges. On July 10, 2012, the Constitutional Accountability Center filed the case of Tuaua v. United States in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The complaint sought recognition from the State Department that persons born in American Samoa are citizens by virtue of the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs included five U.S. nationals born in American Samoa who had, in one way or another, been harmed due to their noncitizen status. 2 The complaint relied almost exclusively on the doctrine of jus soli, which is the common law proposition that individuals born in the territory of a nation are automatically citizens of that nation. The United States, as defendants, moved to dismiss the complaint, arguing that the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to the territories.! It relied on a series of Supreme Court decisions from the turn of the twentieth century, collectively known as the Insular Cases.! These cases, the defendants argued, specifically deny constitutional citizenship to those born in the territories. For support, the defendants cited a series of circuit court decisions denying Fourteenth Amendment citizenship to those born in the Philippines during U.S. occupation. An amicus brief filed by American Samoa Congressman Eni Faleomavaega sided with the defendants against citizenship." He placed heavy emphasis on the potentially destructive effects that citizenship could have on the culture of American Samoa. 9

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