Israeli-American gay couple wins lawsuit to have twins recognized as US citizens

Request was previously denied because boy is not his US parent’s biological son; judge rules children of Americans who marry abroad are citizens if parents married at time of birth

A federal judge ruled Thursday that a twin son of a binational gay couple, who was previously denied US citizenship on the grounds that he is not his American parent’s biological son, will from now be considered a US citizen since birth.

Los Angeles federal Judge John F. Walter said the children of US citizens who marry abroad are entitled to US citizenship at birth if their parents were married at the time of the child’s birth, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Last year, Ethan Dvash-Banks became a plaintiff at the tender age of 16 months in a federal lawsuit against the US State Department that sought to extend him the same rights his brother has as a citizen.

According to the Times, the federal judge requested that the State Department and Ethan Dvash-Banks’ family together propose a judgment by the end of the month.

The lawsuit was filed last year by an LGBTQ immigrant rights group that said the State Department is discriminating against same-sex bi-national couples by denying their children citizenship at birth.

“This is a huge victory for Ethan Dvash-Banks and his family,” Aaron C. Morris, executive director of Immigration Equality and one of the attorneys representing the Dvash-Banks family said, according to the LA Times. “They wanted their twin boys in every way to be treated exactly the same. It really hurt them to have one child get the remarkable privilege of US citizenship at birth and the other to be required to petition as an immigrant.”

Elad Dvash-Banks, right, and his partner, Andrew, play with their twin sons, Ethan, left, and Aiden in their apartment Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Andrew Dvash-Banks was studying in Israel when he met his future husband, Elad, an Israeli citizen. Because they couldn’t marry at the time in the US or in Israel, they moved to Canada, where they wed in 2010. Each boy was conceived with donor eggs and the sperm from a different father, but born by the same surrogate mother minutes apart in September 2016.

Everything seemed fine until the couple brought their infants to the American consulate in Toronto a few months later to apply for citizenship and the woman at the counter began asking probing questions they found shocking and humiliating.

She told them she had discretion to require a DNA test to show who the biological father was of each boy and without those tests neither son would get citizenship. The men knew that Andrew was Aiden’s biological father and Elad was Ethan’s but they hadn’t planned on telling anyone.

Sixteen-month-old Ethan Dvash-Banks, left, and his twin brother, Aiden, play in the living room of their apartment Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

“I started crying,” Andrew Dvash-Banks said. “These are twins, how can you differentiate between them? They were born minutes apart.”

After submitting the DNA test results, the couple received two envelopes from the US on the same day in March. A large one included Aiden’s passport inside. The other was just a letter notifying Andrew that Ethan’s application had been denied.

The family said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times that they were relieved by the court decision to award citizenship to their child.

“This hurt us every day. Now our boys will be treated exactly the same, which is all we ever wanted,” Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks said.