Petitioner sued in a Federal District Court for an injunction
restraining enforcement of § 352(a)(1) of the Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1952, which provides that a naturalized American
citizen shall lose his nationality by
"having a continuous residence for three years in the territory
of a foreign state of which he was formerly a national or in which
the place of his birth is situated. . . ."
A single-judge District Court refused petitioner's request to
convene a three-judge court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2282 and
dismissed the action. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held: the constitutional question raised by
petitioner's complaint was not plainly insubstantial; the
single-judge District Court was powerless to dismiss the action on
the merits; and a three-judge District Court should have been
convened. Pp.
372 U. S.
224-225.
Judgment vacated and case remanded to District Court.
PER CURIAM.
Trial of this case should have been before a three-judge
District Court convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2282, 2284, as
petitioner requested. Her complaint explicitly sought an
"injunction restraining the enforcement, operation or execution of
. . . [an] Act of Congress" -- § 352(a)(1) of the Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1952, 8 U.S.C. § 1484(a)(1), which provides that
a naturalized
Page 372 U. S. 225
American citizen shall lose his nationality by
"having a continuous residence for three years in the territory
of a foreign state of which he was formerly a national or in which
the place of his birth is situated. . . ."
The District Court concluded that petitioner's complaint
presented no substantial constitutional issue, and denied
petitioner's motion to convene a three-judge court, relying on
Lapides v. Clark, 85 U.S.App.D.C. 101, 176 F.2d 619
(1949),
cert. denied, 338 U.S. 860, in which the Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had directly upheld
the predecessor of a companion provision, § 352(a)(2) of the 1952
Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1484(a)(2), which deprived the naturalized American
of his citizenship for residing for five years in any foreign
state. The Court of Appeals' per curiam affirmance was also based
on
Lapides. Although no view is here intimated as to the
merits of the constitutional question in the present case, we
disagree with the conclusion of the courts below as to the
substantiality of that issue. The intervening decisions of this
Court in
Perez v. Brownell, 356 U. S.
44, and
Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S.
86, reveal that the constitutional questions involving
deprivation of nationality which were presented to the district
judge were not plainly insubstantial. The single-judge District
Court was therefore powerless to dismiss the action on the merits,
and should have convened a three-judge court.
Ex parte Northern
Pac. R. Co., 280 U. S. 142,
280 U. S. 144;
Stratton v. St. Louis S.W. R. Co., 282 U. S.
10,
282 U. S. 15;
Ex parte Poresky, 290 U. S. 30;
Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp. v. Epstein, 370 U.
S. 713. The judgments below are vacated, and the case is
remanded to the District Court for expeditious action consistent
with the views here expressed.
So ordered.
