WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Supreme Court rejects the President’s attempt to end birthright citizenship. The President issued an executive order aimed to prevent children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents from automatically becoming Americans. It is a 6 to 3 decision.
In the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, he writes: “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights- to freely participate in our political community.” He adds: “We keep that promise today.”
“For what was one of the most anticipated decisions in a long time, the result is not surprising,” said Michael Elkins, a lawyer with MLE Law Firm. “I never saw any other legal analysts that thought they would strike down birthright citizenship or enforce Trump’s executive order.”
On Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order, which aimed to end birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents from automatically becoming US citizens. The justices said the executive order violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
“In the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark versus the United States, the Court has already decided this issue very clearly,” said Robert J. McWhirter, a lawyer and a constitutional historian and expert. McWhirter authored the book “Fixing the Framers’ Failure: The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and America’s New Birth of Freedom”. “When the 14th Amendment clearly says a person born here is a citizen it has to be torturous to say that doesn’t mean what it says and the two dissenting opinions basically are pretty tortured.”
In the dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas writes “The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially unconstitutional the President’s order excluding from citizenship the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens. In doing so, the Court 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.”
The President is slamming the Court’s decision but is now turning to Congress. He suggested that Congress could easily address it through legislation but we’re told, the decision rests on constitutional grounds, and it would take an amendment to overcome the decision.
