(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. by executive order, reaffirming more than a century of legal precedent and national tradition that babies born on American soil are automatically American citizens.
The 6-3 decision is a blow to Trump, who had lobbied the court to uphold his Day 1 order and attended oral arguments in the case, becoming the first sitting president to do so.
Chief Justice John 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.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented from the decision. Thomas and Gorsuch wrote that neither the Constitution nor federal law “guaranteed citizenship to persons who were not domiciled in the United States.”
Thomas argued that domicile, or the place of legal permanent home, of a child’s parents is the appropriate indicator of a child’s citizenship, given the nation’s history and tradition.
Trump had argued that children born to unlawful immigrants and temporary visitors, like tourists and foreign students, do not qualify for citizenship under terms of the 14th Amendment, which was enacted after the Civil War to address the status of former slaves and their descendants.
Immigrant advocates and civil liberties groups challenging the policy change warned that it would harm hundreds of thousands of children born every year to non-citizen parents and create a bureaucratic nightmare for older Americans, who would no longer be able to prove citizenship simply with a birth certificate.
“The court’s decision reaffirms a fundamental American promise — if you are born here, you are a citizen. A president cannot change the Constitution by executive fiat,” said ACLU legal director Cecilia Wang, who argued the case before the court. “Our brave clients and our legal team stand with millions of people around our country who spoke up for one of our most cherished rights. The Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship stands strong.”
An estimated 255,000 children born every year to non-citizen parents would have lost legal status under the order, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Some may have faced difficulty establishing citizenship in any country, effectively being born as “stateless.”
Every lower court to have considered Trump’s unprecedented order deemed it unlawful, issuing orders to put it on hold. The high court’s decision preserves the status quo.
The 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, says all “persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. Congress later codified the same language in federal citizenship law in 1940.
The administration insisted children born to parents who are not American citizens or legal permanent residents are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. because they still owe political “allegiance” to a foreign nation.
The Supreme Court rejected that argument in 1898.
“The [14th] Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States,” wrote Justice Horace Gray in the landmark Wong Kim Ark v. U.S. decision, addressing the status of children born to noncitizens.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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