Giving Compass' Take:
- Jacob Knutson discusses how this is only the beginning of the battle over birthright citizenship, despite the Supreme Court's ruling to strike down the recent executive order attacking it.
- What are the implications of restricting birthright citizenship on efforts to restrict access to voting by requiring voters to prove their citizenship in increasingly complex ways?
- Ask a custom question to find other nonprofits focused on democracy and civil society.
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Though the Supreme Court may have struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order attacking birthright citizenship Tuesday, the razor-thin majority that ruled against the president gave legal scholars and immigration advocates little cause for celebration.
Indeed, for many, it marked a near disaster for birthright citizenship.
While the Court broke 6-3 against the president’s order in Trump v. Barbara, technically only five of the nine justices agreed that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause confers automatic citizenship to children born to parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the country.
That should also worry anyone concerned about voting rights: A successful bid to restrict birthright citizenship would supercharge efforts to restrict access to the ballot, raising enormous questions about how to prove one’s citizenship and right to vote.
Experts are already sounding the alarm.
“The fact that four justices endorse the ahistorical, atextual, anti-constitutional reading of the 14th Amendment means that this issue will not die today,” David Bier, an immigration expert at the Cato Institute, said on social media after the ruling.
“While this outcome provides welcome relief, it shows how fragile even our most foundational constitutional guarantees have become,” Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement.
Republicans’ reactions aren’t giving anyone cause for comfort. Rather than taking the order as a complete loss, Trump and his GOP allies recognized that they were within one vote of severely weakening birthright citizenship, which had long been considered a settled question in American jurisprudence.
Perhaps indicative of how close the ruling was, Trump didn’t erupt at the Court as he had with its other rare rulings against him. Instead, the president called the decision “too bad” and ordered congressional Republicans to act.
“Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship,” Trump wrote on social media, adding that congressional Republicans “will have my Complete and Total Support!”
Read the full article about birthright citizenship by Jacob Knutson at Democracy Docket.