US Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Order, Upheld Birth-right Citizenship
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 30: In yet another legal setback to the President Donald Trump, the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a broad conception of birth-right citizenship rejecting his executive order denying automatic citizenship to the children born to the parents who are in the US “illegally or temporarily” are not American citizens.
The US Supreme Court has upheld the principle of birthright citizenship, ruling against President Donald Trump’s attempt to change who counts as an American citizen at birth. The court, on the final day of its term, ruled 6-3 to maintain the right to American citizenship for nearly everyone born on US soil. Earlier, lower courts blocked the move. The Supreme Court agreed in a majority opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts.
“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” Roberts wrote. “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights, to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today,” he wrote.
The Justices relied on a long-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, and more recent federal laws in ruling that anyone born in the country, with very limited exceptions, is a citizen.
Minutes before the ruling was announced, Trump shared an article on his social media platform Truth Social headlined “Trump’s efforts to reverse birthright citizenship may succeed with or without SCOTUS.” According to some media reports, several Congressional Republicans have legislation pending that could achieve much the same outcome a different ruling would have delivered.
Republican Representative Brian Babin of Texas said, “American citizenship is a priceless privilege that must be protected, not exploited. We must restore integrity to our immigration system, uphold the rule of law, and protect the value of American citizenship for generations to come.” The ruling keeps in place the long-standing judicial reading of the 14th Amendment, which has historically guaranteed citizenship to those born on American soil.
The amendment was originally intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship, although the Citizenship Clause itself is written more broadly. It states: “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Trump personally attended the oral arguments on birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court in April. His administration had argued that the widely accepted view of citizenship was mistaken. Officials claimed that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are therefore not entitled to citizenship. The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on the first day of his second term, forms part of his administration’s broader immigration crackdown.
During arguments in April, both conservative and liberal Justices questioned the order’s legality in a momentous case that was magnified by Trump’s unprecedented attendance in the courtroom. The case framed another test of Mr Trump’s assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court with a conservative majority and a robust view of presidential power that has largely ruled in his favour. In the notable exceptions when the court has not, Mr Trump has responded with starkly personal criticisms of the Justices.
The Justices ruled on Mr Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions. Birthright citizenship was the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. The justices previously struck down global tariffs Mr Trump had imposed under an emergency powers law that had never been used that way.
Mr Trump reacted furiously to the late February tariffs decision, saying he was ashamed of the Justices who ruled against him and calling them unpatriotic.
He also seemed to recognize the court was likely to rule against him on birthright citizenship, too, using his Truth Social platform to criticize “dumb judges and justices” and wealthy pregnant women from China and elsewhere who come to the U.S. to give birth so their newborns will have American citizenship.
Mr Trump’s order would have upended widely held views that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born in the U.S., excluding only the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.
In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down Mr Trump’s executive order as illegal. The decisions have invoked the High Court’s 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which held that the U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.
More than one-quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year would have been affected by the executive order, according to experts. While Mr Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his rhetoric and actions, the birthright citizenship restrictions also would have applied to people who are legally in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards, or permanent resident status.
