US Supreme Court agrees to hear birthright citizenship oral arguments – JURIST
The US Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear oral arguments over President Donald Trump’s executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship, or the guarantee of citizenship to nearly any individual who is born inside the US.
President Trump issued his order in January of this year seeking to end birthright citizenship in the US. The order stated that the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution on which the principle is based was never meant to be “interpreted to extend US citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”
The Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution was enacted in 1868 and reversed the legal precedent set in the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision which refused to grant freedom to a Black slave on the basis that people of African descent were not citizens of the US. The amendment states that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The legal dispute can be dated back to an 1898 US Supreme Court ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which interpreted the belief that the Fourteenth Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens.”
The Trump executive order zeroes in on the amendment language “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and follows a radical originalist reading of the amendment that claims the law was never meant to apply to children of foreign nationals whose children are born in the US.
The order states that the citizenship granted in the amendment does not apply to two categories of individuals 1) persons whose mother were “unlawfully present” in the US and whose father were not US citizens or lawfully permanent residents at the time of the birth; and 2) persons whose mother were present in the US lawfully but temporarily and whose father were not US citizens or lawfully permanent residents at the time of the persons birth.
Three federal courts acted to block the order after litigation was brought to challenge the decree. Appeals courts have consistently rejected Trump administration efforts to overturn adverse lower court decisions and lift injunctions blocking its implementation.
The Supreme Court also refused to lift the injunctions while they gear up to hear arguments regarding the case on May 15, denying a request from the administration to allow the order to be enforced in the meantime.
