US Supreme Court rejects Trump's bid to restrict birthright citizenship

Handing President Donald Trump a stinging defeat, the US Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected his audacious attempt to restrict birthright citizenship in the United States - a right long woven into the fabric of American society - scuttling one of his top priorities in his crackdown on immigration.

The justices in a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts decided that Trump's directive violated language in the ‌US Constitution's 14th Amendment that confers citizenship to those born in the United States who are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

They upheld a lower court's decision that blocked Trump's executive order that had directed US agencies not to recognise the citizenship of children born in the United States if ​neither parent is an American citizen or legal ⁠permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder.

Roberts was joined by fellow conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, as well as the court's three liberal justices, in rejecting Trump's order.

The ruling marked the third time this year that ‌the court invalidated a major Trump initiative, following its February decision to strike down his ‌sweeping global tariffs and a rejection on Monday of his bid to immediately fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 that ended slavery in the United States, and overturned a notorious 1857 Supreme Court decision that had declared that people of African descent could never be US citizens.

"Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights - to freely participate in our political community," Roberts wrote, adding that the authors of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in the land.
"We keep that promise today," Roberts wrote.

Kavanaugh, while agreeing with the ruling's ‌outcome, disagreed with its rationale. Kavanaugh said in a concurring opinion that the order contravenes a separate federal law codifying birthright citizenship rights but not the 14th Amendment itself.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
Trump, who has repeatedly tested the limits of presidential power in domestic and foreign policy, issued the ⁠order last year on his first day back in office as part of a suite of policies to crack down on legal and illegal immigration. Critics have accused the Republican president of racial and religious discrimination in his approach to immigration.

Trump for years had threatened to limit who qualifies for citizenship at birth. Following Tuesday's ruling, he wrote on his Truth Social platform that the ruling was "too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process."

"No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary! Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support!" Trump wrote.

The challengers to Trump's directive said the Supreme Court already had settled the question of birthright citizenship in an 1898 case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which recognized that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship by birth on US soil, including to the children of foreign nationals.

"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," Roberts ​wrote.

"We see no reason to depart from that view today."

The Trump administration contended that the 1898 precedent supported Trump's order because, according to the court's ruling in that case, at the time of his birth, Wong Kim Ark's parents had permanent domicile and residence in ‌the United States.

Roberts said there was "scant evidence" to support the Trump administration's "dramatically revisionist view" of how to interpret the citizenship language of the 14th Amendment to limit birthright citizenship.

"If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design," Roberts wrote.

Reuters