KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 30 — Malaysia’s highest court has scheduled June 25 to hear an appeal by advocacy group Family Frontiers, which seeks equal treatment in citizenship being conferred automatically to the overseas-born children of Malaysian mothers as to Malaysian fathers.
Family Frontiers’ lawyer Abraham Au confirmed the hearing date with Malay Mail when contacted today, and affirmed it would be heard with several other citizenship cases, following case management before deputy registrar Suhaila Haron yesterday.
Lawyer Raymond Mah, who is representing 26-year-old Mahisha Sulaiha Abdul Majeed and 40-year-old Tan Soo Yin in two separate citizenship cases, also confirmed the date of hearing.
Online court records show that six citizenship cases are scheduled to be heard before the same Federal Court panel on June 25.
In September 2021, the High Court ruled in favour of Family Frontiers and six Malaysian mothers that the overseas-born children are entitled to Malaysian citizenship, but this was overturned by the Court of Appeal in a 2-1 decision on August 5, 2022.
But on December 14, 2022, the Federal Court granted leave to Family Frontiers from the Federal Court to appeal the appellate court’s decision.
Of the six citizenship cases, Family Frontiers and Mahisha share the same constitutional questions; among them: whether Malaysia’s Federal Constitutions prohibits gender discrimination against Malaysian women in terms of citizenship laws and also involves the citizenship condition of Section 1(b) in the Federal Constitution’s Part II of the Second Schedule.
Two of the six citizenship cases – namely Tan who was born in Johor to unknown biological parents and 37-year-old Azimah Hamzah who was born in Pahang before her Cambodian refugee parents became Malaysians – involve a separate citizenship condition under Section 1(e) in the Federal Constitution’s Part II of the Second Schedule.
Another of the six cases involve a different scenario, namely a 31-year-old woman who was born in Kuala Lumpur to a Malaysian father and non-Malaysian mother before they registered their marriage.
