Cite as: 582 U. S. ____ (2017) 3 Syllabus (1) At the time §1409 was enacted as part of the Nationality Act of 1940 (1940 Act), two once habitual, but now untenable, as­ sumptions pervaded the Nation’s citizenship laws and underpinned judicial and administrative rulings: In marriage, husband is domi­ nant, wife subordinate; unwed mother is the sole guardian of a nonmarital child. In the 1940 Act, Congress codified the mother-as-sole­ guardian perception for unmarried parents. According to the stereo­ type, a residency requirement was justified for unwed citizen fathers, who would care little about, and have scant contact with, their nonmarital children. Unwed citizen mothers needed no such prophylac­ tic, because the alien father, along with his foreign ways, was pre­ sumptively out of the picture. Pp. 9–13. (2) For close to a half century, this Court has viewed with sus­ picion laws that rely on “overbroad generalizations about the differ­ ent talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females.” Virginia, 518 U. S., at 533. No “important [governmental] interest” is served by laws grounded, as §1409(a) and (c) are, in the obsolescing view that “unwed fathers [are] invariably less qualified and entitled than mothers” to take responsibility for nonmarital children. Caban v. Mohammed, 441 U. S. 380, 382, 394. In light of this equal protec­ tion jurisprudence, §1409(a) and (c)’s discrete duration-of-residence requirements for mothers and fathers are anachronistic. Pp. 13–14. (d) The Government points to Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U. S. 787; Miller v. Albright, 523 U. S. 420; and Nguyen v. INS, 533 U. S. 53, for sup­ port. But Fiallo involved entry preferences for alien children; the case did not present a claim of U. S. citizenship. And Miller and Nguyen addressed a paternal-acknowledgment requirement well met here, not the length of a parent’s prebirth residency in the United States. Pp. 14–16. (e) The Government’s suggested rationales for §1409(a) and (c)’s gender-based differential do not survive heightened scrutiny. Pp. 16– 23. (1) The Government asserts that Congress sought to ensure that a child born abroad has a strong connection to the United States. The statute, the Government suggests, bracketed an unwed U. S.­ citizen mother with a married couple in which both parents are U. S. citizens because she is the only legally recognized parent at birth; and aligned an unwed U. S.-citizen father with a married couple, one spouse a citizen, the other, an alien, because of the competing na­ tional influence of the alien mother. This rationale conforms to the long-held view that unwed fathers care little about their children. And the gender-based means scarcely serve the suggested congres­ sional interest. Citizenship may be transmitted to children who have no tie to the United States so long as their U. S.-citizen mother was