Law digests: 17 February 2023

Citizenship

R (on the application of Roehrig) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 31 (Admin), [2023] All ER (D) 04 (Feb)

The Administrative Court dismissed the claimant’s judicial review claim, challenging the Secretary of State’s decision to refuse to grant him a British passport. The claimant had contended that, at his birth in October 2000, he had become a British citizen by virtue of s 1(1)(b) of the British Nationality Act 1981 (BNA 1981) because, on that date, his French mother (who had then been resident in the UK by virtue of her status as a worker who was a citizen of an EU member state) had been settled in the UK, within the meaning of BNA 1981. The question of whether the claimant had acquired British citizenship on his birth depended on whether the mother had been subject to immigration laws, such that she had not been settled for the purposes of BNA 1981when the claimant had been born. The court held that: (i) the Immigration (European Economic