Sullivan-Cromwell-Sign Photo Credit: Jason Doiy / The Recorder

The State Department unconstitutionally classifies children of married same-sex couples as “born out of wedlock,” resulting in the denial of U.S. citizenship for some of those children, a bicoastal pair of lawsuits filed Monday claims.

The plaintiffs in the suits, one filed in the District of Columbia and the other in the Central District of California, are U.S. citizen parents in same-sex marriages with noncitizen spouses. They allege that because they are in same-sex marriages, the State Department treated their requests to confer citizenship to their children differently than it does heterosexual couples.

According to the lawsuits, though one provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act entitles those born abroad to citizenship at birth if one married parent is a U.S. citizen, the State Department instead evaluated the plaintiffs' children's rights to citizenship under another section that only applies to children born out of wedlock. Under that section, the children can only be citizens if they have a biological link to a citizen parent.