Richard Wolf

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The chief justice of the United States has driven over the speed limit. One of his colleagues related a story about carrying a pocketknife into a government building. Another often fibs about her weight.

If a naturalized citizen were to lie about such things, a Justice Department lawyer told the high court Wednesday, he or she could be stripped of citizenship. Perhaps with an eye on the Trump administration's stepped-up efforts against illegal immigrants, several justices expressed alarm.

Sitting for their last scheduled oral argument of the 2016 term, the justices were in a feisty mood when it came to an ethnic Serb's case against the U.S. government, which revoked her citizenship for lying about her husband's military record.

Their concerns were not related so much to Divna Maslenjak's misdeeds more than a decade ago, however, as they were to the government's interpretation of a law criminalizing misrepresentations in naturalization proceedings. It matters not, assistant solicitor general Robert Parker said, whether the lies are related to the cause of winning citizenship.

Chief Justice John Roberts started pushing back on that theory by admitting that — long since the statute of limitations expired, mind you — he drove 60 miles per hour in a 55-mph zone. Told that a naturalized citizen could lose his citizenship if he lied about that, Roberts exploded.

"Oh, come on!" he said. "You're saying that on this form, you expect everyone to list every time in which they drove over the speed limit?"

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the requirement could extend to lying about an embarrassing childhood nickname. Justice Stephen Breyer said it could criminalize an unreported pen knife in a pocket. Justice Elena Kagan said she was "horrified" to learn that lying about her weight would be included among the no-no's — to which Parker replied, "only under oath."

Unless the lies must be relevant to the issue of obtaining citizenship, Roberts said, "the government will have the opportunity to denaturalize anyone they want." That would be "extraordinary power," he said.

"Your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship," Justice Anthony Kennedy chimed in.

Lies about husband's past

The government receives nearly 800,000 petitions for naturalization each year, making it impossible for officials to catch every harmless white lie. But the law is the law, Parker said — and it doesn't specify that misrepresentations must be material.

That argument carried at least some weight for the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, who has proven to be a stickler for the letter of the law — just as advertised during the months leading up to his confirmation. To say only certain lies are punishable, he said, would require "a lot of linguistic somersaults."

Even some liberal justices acknowledged that Maslenjak's lies might have helped her gain citizenship in 2007. Her troubles started six years later, when a federal grand jury indicted her for winning naturalization "contrary to law" by stating that she had not lied during the immigration process.

It turned out Maslenjak lied when applying for refugee status in the United States during the 1990s, both about her husband's service in a Bosnian militia unit implicated in war crimes and other matters. She was convicted, sentenced to two years' probation and had her naturalization revoked, a conviction upheld by a federal appeals court. She was deported in October while her case was still pending.

Her lawyer, Christopher Landau, told the justices that while Maslenjak's jury was told her lies did not have to be relevant, "Congress recognizes that not all lies are created equal."

For a suddenly confessional court, that appeared to be a winning argument.

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