The Supreme Court declared that the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees citizenship to every child born on US territory. The justices relied on a landmark 1898 ruling and the amendment’s legislative history. The affected children are “citizens from birth under the Constitution,” the opinion states.
President Trump had signed an executive order early in his second term that would have excluded babies of migrants without legal status, asylum seekers, foreign students, and tourists from automatic citizenship. Lower courts had already blocked the order before the Supreme Court’s ruling. With the high court’s decision, the legal path is largely exhausted; a change would be possible only through a constitutional amendment or a future reversal by the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion: “Then as now, citizenship means the right to have rights – to participate freely in our political community.” Joining the three liberal justices in the majority was conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, once nominated by Trump, found no constitutional violation in the president’s move but saw a violation of federal law.
Trump called the decision “very regrettable for our country” on his platform Truth Social and urged Congress to abolish birthright citizenship. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissenting opinion that the court was maintaining a “strong incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally.” Critics of the plan had warned of a group of stateless children; according to projections by the Migration Policy Institute and Penn State University, the number of people without legal status could have risen by 2.7 million by 2045 and by 5.4 million by 2075.
Source: Stadt München
