The Supreme Court affirmed on Tuesday that that birthright citizenship is the law of the land. The decision, by Chief Justice John Roberts, upholds the clear meaning of the Constitution and knocks down the Trump administration’s attempt to deny citizenship to thousands of newborns every year. It’s no exaggeration to say that the case was a test of whether this would remain a nation where everyone is born on equal legal footing, or whether the country would revert to a caste system in which one’s place in society is determined by the status of one’s parents. And the decision was scandalously close.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote in his 5–4 majority opinion. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

But Roberts’ sweeping ruling commanded only a bare 5–4 majority on the meaning of the Constitution’s citizenship clause. Justice Brett Kavanaugh would have struck down Trump’s executive order based on Congress’ previous codification of birthright citizenship, but does not believe it is required by the Constitution. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito dissented. That math is too close for comfort.

Court watchers generally expected an overwhelming rebuke for Trump in this case, with perhaps one or two dissenters. Instead, birthright citizenship—and with it the promise of a casteless society of equals—hangs by a thread. To be clear, if one Democratic appointee leaves the court while Trump or another Republican is president, the promise of equality for all under the law may fall.

On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order attempting to deny birthright citizenship to the children of temporary visitors and undocumented people, claiming that such a policy is the proper interpretation of the citizenship clause. But the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, added to the Constitution after the Civil War, states: “All 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 only exceptions, carved into the jurisdiction requirement, are the children of ambassadors, invading armies, and, at the time, American Indians under tribal authority. Today’s decision upholds this long-held understanding of the Constitution.

This isn’t the first time the court has ruled that the citizenship clause means what it says. In a landmark decision in 1898, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the court found that birthright citizenship is the rule for virtually everyone born in the United States. Today’s court upheld all of Wong Kim Ark. “We see no reason to depart from that view today,” Roberts wrote. While the decision is a rebuke of Trump, the majority didn’t need to take this case in order to shut down Trump’s executive order—as the majority acknowledged today, it was already unconstitutional........

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