Supreme Court rules on child’s citizenship

The Supreme Court has given judgment in N3 & ZA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] UKSC 6, a case concerning the effects of a deprivation of citizenship which is later overturned.  The key question raised is whether a person who has been deprived by order of their British citizenship, but later wins an appeal (or persuades the Home Secretary to withdraw the order) on the grounds that they have been rendered stateless, has been British in the period between the original order and the outcome of the appeal or the withdrawal.  That may dictate whether any children born in that interim period are British or not.

In summary the Supreme Court determines that two people who successfully challenged an order depriving them of their citizenship had remained British throughout.  There was not a period during which they were stateless. Therefore the child of one of them, who was born while her father’s appeal was outstanding, was British in consequence of being born to a British father.

In the original proceedings before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a man anonymised as “E3” had been deprived of his British citizenship by the Home Secretary on the grounds that he presented a risk to national security.  Under the British Nationality Act 1981, the Home Secretary could only do this if the effect of her decision was not to render him stateless.  In E3’s case, the Home Secretary considered that he was a dual British and Bangladeshi citizen and therefore that depriving him of his British citizenship would not render him stateless. 

E3’s appeal was linked to that of another (unrelated) man in the same circumstances, known as “N3”. E3 and N3 argued that, under Bangladeshi law, each had lost his Bangladeshi citizenship at the age of 21: therefore the subsequent loss of their British citizenship made them stateless. SIAC accepted that argument and allowed their appeals, but the Home Secretary successfully appealed to the Court of Appeal and their cases were sent back to SIAC to be reconsidered.

While their appeals were awaiting rehearing, SIAC allowed separate appeals involving three other individuals who were determined to have lost their Bangladeshi citizenship at the age of 21 and were therefore made stateless by deprivation of British citizenship. 

The Home Secretary accepted that this meant that E3’s and N3’s appeals had to be conceded, and wrote to them withdrawing the deprivation orders.  But she claimed that this did not mean they had been British in the meantime, merely that their British citizenship had been restored from then on.

This was particularly problematic for E3 and his daughter, “ZA”, who had been born in Bangladesh while his appeal was outstanding.  If E3 had been British at the time of her birth, then ZA had been British by descent at birth; otherwise, she was not.

As to N3, he had attempted to return to the UK after his appeal was initially allowed, but had been denied entry and sent back to France, where he had been detained.

E3, ZA and N3 brought judicial review proceedings, seeking declarations from the court that the two adults had been British at all times and that ZA had been British at birth. 

Their challenges failed before the Administrative Court and Court of Appeal, but N3 and ZA pursued matters to the Supreme Court, which has allowed their appeals, finding that N3 and E3 were British throughout and declaring that ZA therefore was and is a British citizen.

The Court underlined the importance of British citizenship and the principle that it should not be restricted lightly or without clear statutory wording.  It was also concerned to stress the importance of interpreting domestic law, where possible, in a way compatible with international law: in this case Article 8.1 of the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which prohibits rendering a person stateless. 

A determination by SIAC that a person had been rendered stateless was binding on the Home Secretary, who was required to treat them as British throughout, without the need for the order to be formally withdrawn.  The Court however noted changes to the law made by Parliament to the effect that the Home Secretary no longer had to wait until the end of an appeal process before formally depriving a person of their citizenship, meaning that they could be removed from the UK, or barred from entering, even while pursuing a challenge to deprivation.  The purpose, in the Court’s assessment, was to make immigration enforcement action lawful while an appeal was ongoing (and therefore implicitly to make the Home Secretary immune from damages claims).  However, it had no wider effect, and in particular did not restrict people’s possession of British citizenship or their ability to pass it on to their children. Confirming a trend of cases on a similar theme, the continuing legal effect of a decision which has been overturned on appeal may therefore be different, depending on the context.

For ZA, Alasdair Mackenzie was led by Hugh Southey KC of Matrix, instructed by Fahad Ansari of Duncan Lewis solicitors.