Dual citizenship bill: what the Exclusive Citizenship Act says and whether it can pass

The text of S.3283, the deadline it sets for dual citizens, its status in the Senate and the Supreme Court rulings on loss of citizenship.

Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio introduced the Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025, S.3283, in the Senate on December 1, 2025. The bill would end dual citizenship for Americans.

Section 2 of the bill sets out the findings behind it: "To preserve the integrity of national citizenship, allegiance to the United States must be undivided. Existing law allows certain United States citizens to maintain foreign citizenship, which may create conflicts of interest and divided loyalties. It is in the national interest of the United States to ensure that United States citizenship is held exclusively."

The core rule

Section 4(a) reads: "An individual may not be a citizen or national of the United States while simultaneously possessing any foreign citizenship."

Section 4(b) covers a second nationality taken after the law is passed: "A citizen of the United States who, after the date of the enactment of this Act, voluntarily acquires foreign citizenship shall be deemed to have relinquished United States citizenship."

Current dual citizens

People who already hold two nationalities get one year. Section 4(c) says that "not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, a citizen of the United States who also possesses foreign citizenship shall (A) submit to the Secretary of State a written renunciation of such foreign citizenship; or (B) submit to the Secretary of Homeland Security a written renunciation of United States citizenship."

The bill sets the consequence for those who do neither: "An individual subject to paragraph (1) who fails to timely comply with that paragraph shall be deemed to have voluntarily relinquished United States citizenship for purposes of section 349(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1481(a))."

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Enforcement

Section 5 gives the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security 180 days after enactment to act. The Secretary of State would "promulgate regulations to carry out this Act, including procedures for declaration, verification, and recordkeeping of exclusive citizenship."

The Secretary of Homeland Security "shall publish in the Federal Register a notification of the requirement under section 4(c)."

Where the bill stands

The official bill record lists a single action, dated December 1, 2025: "Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary." The record was last updated on August 10, 2026, with no later step.

To become law, S.3283 would need a committee vote, passage by the full Senate, passage by the House of Representatives and the President's signature. No companion bill appears in the House record.

What the law says today

Current federal law ties loss of citizenship to intent. Section 1481(a) of Title 8 reads: "A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality." The first act on the list is "obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years."

The list goes on to "taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years" and "making a formal renunciation of nationality before a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States in a foreign state, in such form as may be prescribed by the Secretary of State."

The Supreme Court ruled on the question in Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967: "In our country the people are sovereign and the Government cannot sever its relationship to the people by taking away their citizenship."

The ruling overturned the 1958 decision in Perez v. Brownell: "First we reject the idea expressed in Perez that, aside from the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress has any general power, express or implied, to take away an American citizen's citizenship without his assent."

The Court also wrote: "Citizenship is no light trifle to be jeopardized any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of one of its general or implied grants of power. In some instances, loss of citizenship can mean that a man is left without the protection of citizenship in any country in the world, as a man without a country."

The same opinion holds: "We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to, and does, protect every citizen of this Nation against a congressional forcible destruction of his citizenship, whatever his creed, color, or race. Our holding does no more than to give to this citizen that which is his own, a constitutional right to remain a citizen in a free country unless he voluntarily relinquishes that citizenship."

In Vance v. Terrazas in 1980, the Court added that "the trier of fact must in the end conclude that the citizen not only voluntarily committed the expatriating act prescribed in the statute, but also intended to relinquish his citizenship."

Murblz experts compare the countries that grant a second nationality in the ranking of the 10 best countries for citizenship in 2026.

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