Fisher: Citizenship, Federalism, and Delayed Birth Registration 2024] C ITIZENSHIP, F EDERALISM, AND DELAYED BIRTH R EGISTRATION 75 State and local laws governing delayed birth registration can impact a person’s access to rights typically associated with U.S. citizenship, but they can also impact whether the state and federal government will agree that the person has U.S. citizenship. As a result, these varied processes reflect a second understanding of citizenship federalism: where state and local law and practice impact the U.S. government’s recognition of a person’s citizenship. Of course, a person has no agency in choosing which state laws apply to their birth registration. Further, the federal system of birth registration does not fall within existing theories of cooperative federalism, and instead demonstrates dual-concurrence federalism. 151 In one previously-described model, the federal government “draft[s] states into partnership” implementing federal policy. Examples include Medicaid, in which the federal government provides funding and guidelines, which states then implement. In another model, the federal government passively incorporates principles of state law into federal benefits. Examples include federal immigration benefits, which rely on state definitions of marriage; in this model, the individual participates in a state-based legal process to establish some condition or benefit under state law. A second adjudication with a federal agency merely incorporates that status from state law as a condition precedent. 152 In the domain of birth registration, federal regulation of state-issued birth certificates is quite minimal, limited to compiling data and requiring a handful of fraud prevention measures. Even so, after a state agency or state court adjudicates an individual’s request for delayed birth registration, if the individual seeks a federal benefit federal agencies retain authority and broad discretion to reject a claim to U.S. citizenship and to reject the facts of birth established by a delayed birth certificate. 153 The federal-state relationship does not rely on regulation or regulatory action, but on independent adjudications of an individual’s status. 154 This is dual-concurrence federalism, 155 in which a person accesses a right only when two conditions are met. First, state agency or court must affirmatively determine that an individual meets the requirements for a 151. For a review of literature about cooperative federalism, see Taleed El-Sabawi, MHPAEA & Marble Cake: Parity & the Forgotten Frame of Federalism, 124 DICK. L. R EV. 591, 602–05 (2020). 152. Remus, supra note 10, at 248–49. 153. Id. at 250. 154. Id. 155. The term ‘double jeopardy federalism” is tempting. But double jeopardy refers to being tried twice for the same crime by the same sovereign; birth certificate recognition is rather the opposite: two sovereigns must both reach a conclusion that a person was born in the United States to access recognition as a citizen. Published by IdeaExchange@UAkron, 2025 27