After SCOTUS Loss, Trump Pushes Congress to Pass Birthright Citizenship Bill |
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After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against President Donald Trump’s attempt to redefine birthright citizenship through executive order on Tuesday, Trump demanded that Congress pass a law rescinding birthright citizenship rights instead.
The birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reads, in part, that:
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.
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.
Trump’s executive order, issued on the first day of his second term in office, sought to define “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” as meaning that children born in the country to non-citizen parents were not technically subject to U.S. jurisdiction. On Tuesday, five justices of the Supreme Court rejected that argument.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who penned the majority opinion, dismissed arguments by Trump and his allies that the 14th Amendment was written solely to address the issue of freed Black Americans following the Civil War.
SCOTUS Rules Trump Can’t Change Birthright Citizenship Through Executive Order
The “goal” of the amendment, Roberts wrote, including the birthright citizenship clause, was “to put the ‘great question of citizenship’ ‘beyond the legislative power’ altogether, to settle the issue once and for all.”
The framers of the amendment “extended [the promise of citizenship] to ‘every free-born person in this land,'” Roberts added. “We keep that promise........