U.S. Supreme Court rejects Trump’s move to restrict birthright citizenship as unconstitutional

U.S. Supreme Court rejects Trump's move to restrict birthright citizenship as unconstitutional The court ruled that Trump's attempt to restrict birthright citizenship to babies with at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or green-card holder conflicts with the Constitution’s 14th Amendment The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a central plank of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda on Tuesday, deeming his plan to restrict birthright citizenship to be unconstitutional. The divided court said an executive order Trump issued hours after his inauguration last year couldn’t be squared with the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which has long been understood as guaranteeing citizenship to virtually everyone born on U.S. soil. The case tested what it means to be an American. Trump’s order sought to restrict birthright citizenship to babies with at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or green-card holder, affecting an estimated 250,000 children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary visitors each year. “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. “The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today.” The vote to invalidate the executive order was 6-3, though one member of the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said he disagreed with the court’s constitutional analysis and would have instead thrown out the executive order as violating a federal statute. Trump sought to minimize the ruling, saying on social media that “we could easily make it up in Congress through Legislation.” Kavanaugh’s ruling tried to offer a roadmap for Congress to do that by amending the immigration laws, though it’s far from clear the high court majority would uphold that step. “Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship,” Trump said. - Canada's justice minister rebuffs Conservative push to end birthright citizenship - Why does Canada automatically give citizenship to people born here? - Advertisement 1Story continues below The Justice Department said on social media that it will “prioritize the prosecutions of birth tourism schemes across the country.” Among other tools, the department can prosecute people who lie on their visa applications about why they’re coming to the U.S. Hard-line conservatives responded swiftly to the court’s decision, with Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado calling on the State Department to stop approving visas for pregnant applicants. Another Republican, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, introduced legislation to ban pregnant foreigners from entering the U.S. The legislation stands virtually no chance of getting the 60 votes it would need in the Senate. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, guarantees citizenship to anyone who is born in the U.S. and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Critics said Trump was seeking to rewrite that provision by arguing it was designed to cover only the children of freed slaves. Federal immigration statutes enacted in 1940 and 1952 use identical language. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented. “The court has repurposed the Fourteenth Amendment to protect its own set of preferred rights that the Reconstruction Congress never contemplated and that cannot find support in its text,” Thomas wrote for himself and Gorsuch, referring to the period after the Civil War. Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Roberts’ majority opinion. “The court’s decision reaffirms a fundamental American promise – if you are born here, you are a citizen,” said American Civil Liberties Union National Legal Director Cecillia Wang, who argued the case on behalf of people opposing the executive order. “A president cannot change the Constitution by executive fiat.” Immigrant rights groups and Democratic state attorneys general hailed the court’s decision, saying it reinforces a long-held right and spares thousands of babies from being born essentially stateless to parents who came to the U.S. seeking a better life. “I am relieved for the children who will never know how close the American dream came to being taken from them, and for the families who will never have to explain to a child why the country they were born in refuses to accept them,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said. The Supreme Court ruled in an 1898 decision known as US v. Wong Kim Ark that the citizenship clause covered a man born in California to two Chinese parents. The 6-2 decision concluded the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was written to exclude only a few narrow classes of people, including the children of invaders, foreign ambassadors and Native Americans. “What the court held in Wong Kim Ark was simple: The Citizenship Clause incorporated the common law and granted citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States,” Roberts wrote. “Not surprisingly, then, in the 128 years since, we have repeatedly understood the rule of Wong Kim Ark to guarantee citizenship to all children born in the United States and subject to its power.” The court heard arguments April 1 with Trump in attendance for the first half of the session. His appearance marked the first time in the court’s recorded history that a sitting president had gone to an argument. Democrats said the executive order also could have stripped millions of current Americans of their citizenship, along with their ability to vote and get passports. Lower courts had uniformly said the executive order was unlawful. In the case before the justices, a federal district judge in New Hampshire ruled against Trump, and the administration appealed directly to the Supreme Court, bypassing the appeals court level. The case is Trump v. Barbara, 25-365. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here. Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. 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