U.S. changes policy that denied citizenship to the children of same-sex couples

The U.S. State Department has revoked a policy that made it difficult for the children of same-sex parents to recognized as U.S. citizens at birth. The previous policy stated that both parents had to be biologically related to a child in order for them to be recognized as a U.S. citizen at birth.

So, if one person in a couple was not a U.S. citizen, and that person was the biological parent of their child, the child was also not a citizen. Such was the case for Elad Dvash-Banks and his partner, Andrew Banks, who had twins together, conceived via surrogate in Canada. The couple moved to Canada in 2010 so they could legally marry. When the decided to become parents, they used one surrogate but each of their sperm – so one twin, Ethan, is biologically related to Elad and the other, Aiden, is biologically related to Andrew.