Fisher: Citizenship, Federalism, and Delayed Birth Registration 2024] C ITIZENSHIP, F EDERALISM, AND DELAYED BIRTH R EGISTRATION 81 by state law, meaning that a person’s ability to secure recognition as a citizen can be impacted significantly by variations in state law. A federal agency with relevant jurisdiction – a competent authority – may still refuse to recognize a person as a citizen despite their entitlement to citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. If such a person lacks citizenship anywhere else, that person is stateless. 178 This also means that the experience of statelessness in the United States is not confined to people born elsewhere. Here, we heed the call to “scrutinize the legal framework and political conditions within which modern identity management systems are implemented to avoid perpetuating or expanding existing forms of exclusion.” 179 The harms of unregistered birth is not borne evenly; requirements to carry identification have been used “to maintain a hold over noncitizens, and to cleave those whom the majority perceived to be unreliable citizens”; they have been imposed “almost always . . . on people outside our circle of citizenship—on free blacks, on Chinese immigrants, on aliens, on (racialized) vagrants.” 180 While lack of registration may impact people across racial, ethnic, and (formal) citizenship lines, we can assume that the impacts of non-registration of birth are disproportionately harsh for the children of immigrants, communities of color, and low-income individuals. How can policy makers best address the challenges that individuals face in registering their births through delayed processes? The U.S. Congress could pass legislation that would require states to adopt consistent evidentiary rules and procedures. But federal legislation would likely result in higher evidentiary thresholds and thus excluding more U.S. citizens from access to their rights rather than safeguarding against the hardships experienced by unregistered individuals. State legislatures can also, as the Texas legislature did in response to Alecia Pennington’s case, facilitate greater flexibility to allow people entitled to U.S. citizenship to register their births. Within existing legal frameworks, state administrative agencies, legal aid providers, and social workers can assist unregistered individuals. State birth registrars can publish information about delayed registration processes, provide plain-language instructions to would-be registrants, children born in rural areas or border regions, and children whose parents were marginalized by virtue of race or poverty.” Remus, supra note 10, at 228. 178. Stateless Convention, supra note 14, at art. 1(1). 179. Jain, supra note 91, at 239. 180. Jonathan Weinberg, Proving Identity, 44 P EPPERDINE L. R EV. 731, 798, 734 (2017) (emphasis in original). Published by IdeaExchange@UAkron, 2025 33