In a significant legal blow to President Donald Trump, the US Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Constitution guarantees automatic birthright citizenship to almost all children born within the United States.
The 6-3 decision, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, firmly rejected an executive order issued by Trump on the first day of his second term, reports CNN.
The order sought to deny citizenship to infants born in the US to parents who had entered the country illegally or were residing there on temporary visas. The executive order had never been enforced, as every lower court judge to review the policy had deemed it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
While President Trump has long argued that the Constitution does not guarantee such rights, Chief Justice Roberts noted that the architects of the Fourteenth Amendment intentionally defined citizenship in broad terms following the Civil War.
The amendment states, “All persons born or naturalised in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Trump had contended the provision was intended solely for former slaves and was not meant to allow the “entire world to occupy the United States.” However, the court noted that this interpretation has been rejected by legal norms for 160 years.
Chief Justice Roberts pointed to the landmark 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark as a definitive precedent. Born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants, Wong was denied re-entry to the US in 1895 after visiting China on the grounds that he was not a citizen.
The Supreme Court eventually ruled in his favour.
In that historic 6-2 ruling, justices interpreted the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to mean that all children born on US soil are automatically citizens. The only modern exception remains the children of foreign diplomats.
The principle of birthright citizenship has remained so fundamental to American law that even during the Second World War, children born to Japanese citizens held in US detention camps were granted automatic citizenship. This legal understanding was subsequently codified by Congress.
Cecillia Wang of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who argued the case in April, told NPR that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to confer citizenship on the child rather than the parent.
“In America we do not punish children for the sins of their fathers, but instead we wipe the slate clean,” Wang said. “When you’re born in this country, we’re all American, all the same.”
The dissenting votes in Tuesday’s ruling were cast by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito.
