Listen to NPR's live special coverage of the decision Loading...In a sharp rebuke to President Trump, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution guarantees automatic birthright citizenship to virtually all children born in the United States.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court's 6-3 opinion.The decision firmly rejected the executive order that Trump issued on the first day of his second term.
It sought to bar citizenship for babies born in the U.S.to parents who either entered the country illegally or who are living and working here legally with temporary visas.
The executive order never went into effect because every lower court judge who reviewed it concluded, in the words of one judge, that it was "blatantly unconstitutional."Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship.But as Chief Justice Roberts observed, the men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution after the Civil War defined citizenship in broad terms on purpose, rejecting the views of those who wanted to limit citizenship.
The resulting language of the amendment says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."Trump maintained that the provision was meant to apply only to former slaves, but "wasn't meant for the entire world to occupy the United States." That interpretation, however, has not been embraced by the courts or the legal norms of the country for 160 years.Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts' opinion for the court pointed to the court's landmark ruling well over a century ago in the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese immigrants.
Back then, no documentation was required for immigrants entering the United States, and his parents ran a business in San Francisco until they ultimately returned to China.In 1895, their son visited his family in there, but was denied re-entry upon his return to the U.S., on ...