Federal court defies Trump & grants U.S. citizenship to gay dads’ two-year-old daughter

Jonathan Gregg, Simone and Derek Mize
Photo: Photo: Lambda Legal

A federal court in Atlanta recently ruled that Simone Mize-Gregg, a two-year-old born through a surrogate in England to a gay couple, is in fact a U.S. citizen who deserves a U.S. passport despite a refusal by the Trump Administration’s State Department.

Simone is the daughter of Derek Mize and Jonathan Gregg, two American-born citizens who got married in the U.S. in 2015. A friend in England served as the surrogate mother for their child, and Simone was born in 2018 in London.

Related: A gay couple’s kid can get U.S. citizenship after a historic ruling

While preparing taxes in 2019, the couple needed a social security number to claim their daughter as a dependent. When they visited a U.S. embassy to get a consular record of her birth abroad, they watched about 20 heterosexual couples in similar situations get the same paperwork that they had.

But after three hours of invasive questioning, their child was declared as a non-U.S. citizen. Her birth was considered “out of wedlock” because her biological parents weren’t married to each other, even though her actual fathers were.

The State Department’s handling of the case was needlessly cruel and furthered no compelling government interest…

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