BREAKING NEWS: Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order
Supreme Court rejects Trump's birthright citizenship order
The Supreme Court just told President Trump that birthright citizenship isn’t something a president can rewrite with the stroke of a pen.
The Supreme Court ruled that children born in the United States remain American citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status, striking down President Trump’s effort to narrow birthright citizenship.
The decision preserves more than 150 years of constitutional precedent and hands the Trump administration one of its biggest legal defeats on immigration.
In a divided ruling, the court said the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause continues to guarantee citizenship to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil, with only narrow exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the amendment’s promise extends to “every free-born person in this land,” adding, “We keep that promise today.”
Trump’s executive order, signed on his first day back in office, would have denied automatic citizenship to children born to parents who were in the United States illegally or temporarily, including some students and visa holders. Lower courts had blocked the policy before it ever took effect, and the Supreme Court agreed those restrictions violated the Constitution and longstanding precedent dating back to the court’s 1898 Wong Kim Ark decision.
Three conservative justices dissented, with Justice Clarence Thomas arguing the court had expanded the Citizenship Clause beyond what Congress intended after the Civil War. Researchers estimate more than 250,000 babies born in the United States each year would have been affected if Trump’s order had been upheld, making Tuesday’s ruling one of the most significant immigration decisions in decades.
Source: Associated Press
Editor: Some constitutional debates never really go away. This one just got another chapter—and a reminder that changing 150 years of legal precedent takes more than an executive order.