WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a passport dispute centering on whether Americans born in Jerusalem may list their place of birth as Israel.
The court said Monday it will review a lower court ruling that struck down a 2002 law that authorized identifying Jerusalem as part of Israel on U.S. passports. The lower court said the law impermissibly infringed on the power of U.S. presidents, who have refused to recognize any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem since Israel’s creation in 1948.
The challenge to the passport rule was brought by parents of an American boy named Menachem Zivotofsky, who was born in Jerusalem soon after the law was passed.
Zivotofksy is now 11, and his Washington lawyer, Nathan Lewin, said when he filed the Supreme Court appeal that he hoped the boy’s passport could be changed to reflect Israel as his place of birth before his bar mitzvah. Jewish boys have their bar mitzvah at the age of 13.
The court will hear the case in the fall and should hand down a decision by June 2015. Zivotofsky will turn 13 four months later