Our north star at Right to Democracy is that we do not think the federal government should have the power to unilaterally act in U.S. territories regardless of what people in those territories might think or want. 

The legal position the federal government has repeatedly emphasized in recent cases is that Congress has the power to unilaterally recognize or deny U.S. citizenship to people born in U.S. territories regardless what people in those territories might want. Indeed, after the U.S. attorney arguing Tuaua suggested to the D.C. Circuit during oral argument that the views of American Samoa officials could impact the power of the federal government, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to the court clarifying its view that Congress has the power to unilaterally recognize or deny citizenship in American Samoa whatever the position of the American Samoan Government. So the legal question in these court cases is ultimately about the scope of federal power, not local self-determination. 

Thus, when territorial officials in American Samoa or any territory embrace the view that the federal government should have unilateral power to act regardless of what people in that territory may want - as American Samoan officials did in Tuaua and Fitisemanu – we must respectfully disagree. We don’t think the federal government should have that power, especially when the Fourteenth Amendment was specifically enacted to prohibit the federal government from denying citizenship to people born on U.S. soil. 

American Samoan officials also recently embraced unilateral rule by the federal government when they supported H.R. 6062, passed into federal law in 2024, which granted the Secretary of Interior the unilateral power to amend the Constitution of American Samoa. You read that correctly, right now the Secretary of the Interior has complete authority to amend or revoke the Constitution of American Samoa as he or she sees fit.  Officials in American Samoa supported this law in the name of “self-determination.” But the law does not require the Secretary of Interior to follow the wishes of the people of American Samoa. A law that places the power of American Samoa’s constitution in the hands of a single, all-powerful federal official rather than the people of American Samoa is not “self-determination.”

Right to Democracy and the American Samoans we represent continue to support the right of American Samoans to determine their future political relationship with the United States through a process of self-determination. But that does not mean supporting the power of Congress or the Secretary of the Interior to unilaterally decide questions as important as U.S. citizenship or American Samoa’s constitution.