Illinois Man Sues Hillary Clinton Over Passport Denial

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Apr 20, 2012 6:00PM

A Midlothian man is suing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because he says he was denied a U.S. passport and discriminated against because he is Muslim despite being a natural born U.S. citizen. Cliff Urban, 22, applied for the passport in Hammond, Ind., in June 2009, and he says the agency gave him the runaround but never a passport.

Urban says the post office first denied his application because he was wearing a tarboosh in his photo. After he complained to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the post office allowed him to resubmit his application.

Two months later the State Department's New Orleans passport agency requested five personal documents more than five years old. Urban submitted eight. The NWI Times writes:

On Nov. 20, 2009, the Passport Agency sent Urban a letter confirming it received the documents and that Urban was entitled to a U.S. passport. The agency said Urban would not receive a passport unless he filled out the application form and resubmitted the photo enclosed with its reply, but the agency did not send those documents, court records state.

Urban tried to contact the Passport Agency to find out how to move forward, but the office told him he would have to restart the process, court documents state. On Jan. 11, 2010, Urban received a final letter denying his passport application because he hadn't responded to the "deficiencies" identified in its Nov. 20 letter.

Urban is seeking a passport, the cost of attorney's fees and an award of costs.