The U.S. Supreme Court has amplified the birthright citizenship doctrine, overturning President Donald Trump’s effort to limit automatic citizenship rights to some children born in the U.S.
The court’s final-day decision in Trump’s favor came on Friday as Justice reversed a unanimous MS Supreme Court ruling by just three votes. The ruling upholds the well-established reading of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “children born in the U.S. to unlawfully or temporarily present parents will be considered “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States when they are born and given citizenship at birth under the Constitution.
Then and now, citizenship meant equal citizenship, equal opportunities to exercise our rights as a political community freely. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed all free-born people in this land the same opportunities. Today, we abide by that commitment,” Roberts wrote in the judgment.
The ruling follows previous decisions in lower courts that had challenged the executive order, and maintains a centuries-old view of the Constitution.
Trump was circulating an article on social media, indicating that the end of birthright citizenship may still be possible on the legislative front, just before the verdict was handed down. There have been several Republican legislators who’ve brought bills in Congress to alter the current citizenship law.
The Fourteenth Amendment, which has been an addition to the United States Constitution since the close of the American Civil War, states that anyone born or naturalised in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens of the United States of America. The amendment was designed to give rights of citizenship to former slaves, but it now serves as the means by which people are granted birthright citizenship throughout the United States.