edit: In the 1957 case Briehl v. Dulles, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit held that the Department of State could lawfully deny issuance of a United States passport to an applicant who refused to execute an affidavit regarding his political affiliations. However, in a dissenting opinion, Judge David L. Bazelon argued that &quot s)ince expatriation is today impossible without leaving the country, the policy expressed by Congress in 1868 and never repealed precludes a reading of the passport and travel control statutes which would permit the Secretary of State to prevent citizens from leaving". Chief Judge Henry White Edgerton concurred with Bazelon's opinion.

Congress's power to legislate for implicit expatriation of Americans was later heavily restricted by the 1967 case Afroyim v. Rusk, which concluded that natural-born Americans cannot be deprived of citizenship by any means except a voluntary renunciation in the presence of a consular official. Associate Justice Hugo Black's majority opinion extensively discussed the Expatriation Act of 1868, including the history of proposed amendments to it.