Supreme Court strikes down Trump's order ending birthright citizenship

Supreme Court strikes down Trump's order ending birthright citizenship

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship - the guarantee of citizenship to virtually everyone born in the United States. In a decision by Chief Justice John Roberts, in Trump v. Barbara, the justices agreed with the challengers, as well as all of the lower courts around the country that have considered the issue, that Trump's order cannot be reconciled with the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Writing for the majority, Roberts emphasized that the "children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States" "satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause." "Under the Constitution," he concluded, "they are citizens at birth."

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito called the ruling both "one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court" and "a serious mistake." "Careful analysis of the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the process that led to its adoption," Alito argued, "shows that it does not degrade the concept of United States citizenship in this way."

Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the result that the court reached, but not its reasoning. In his view, Trump's order "does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment" but does violate a federal law providing that children who are "born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are U.S. citizens. Congress, Kavanaugh suggested, "could amend" that law "or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But," he noted, "Congress has not yet done so."

Justice Clarence Thomas penned a lengthy dissent, which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined. He called the majority's account "not historically accurate" and said that it "adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support."

Roberts rejected the government's argument that, even if birthright citizenship was the norm in early U.S. history, by the time the 14th Amendment was enacted, the key question was whether a child owed "primary allegiance" to the United States, which in turn hinged on "domicile." As an initial matter, Roberts said, "there is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view."