The Association of Accidental Americans (AAA), alongside 20 ‘accidentals’, has filed an opposition after the US Department of State put forward a motion to dismiss their lawsuit in April 2021.
The legal challenge looks to scrap the $2,350 (£1,670, €1,940) required to give up American citizenship.
The Association argues that renouncing US citizenship is a “fundamental right” and that requiring a fee is “unconstitutional”.
‘Accidental’ Americans are people who acquired US citizenship either by being born in the country or from their parents or acquiring citizenship with the help of green card services, even if in some cases they have never lived or resided in the United States.
In the opposition motion, the AAA “asked the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to rule for the first time in history that Americans have a fundamental right to expatriate and renounce their US citizenship under the US constitution”, it said.
“The renunciation fee is the highest by far charged by any nation for the renunciation of citizenship. Many countries charge nothing for the right to expatriate, which was the case in the United States for some 239 years.”
Turning to Biden administration
When the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) came into force in 2010, a $450 fee was imposed for the first time.
Because of this legislation, which requires US citizens abroad and their foreign financial institutions to report data to the Internal Revenue Service, an increasing number of people sought to waive their citizenship, as many banks and financial services providers started turning down American customers, as a result.
According to the AAA, the government said the fee is required to cover the costs of a very “time-consuming” process, but it argues that the payment “fails to pass the strict constitutional test”.
They believe, instead, that the fee was introduced to “stigmatise and deter Americans abroad from exercising their fundamental, natural right to expatriate”.
Fabein Lehagre, president of the AAA, said: “Fatca and other related laws targeting and placing heavy burdens on US citizens abroad have left accidental Americans with little choice but to renounce US citizenship.
“The time has come for the Biden administration to allow us to cut off our ties with the United States and to freely exercise our fundamental right to renounce our citizenship.”
