The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an effort by the Trump administration to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. The court’s decision invalidates an executive order that would have denied passports and other documents to children born to parents who are not citizens or green card holders.

Background

The executive order was a key part of the Trump administration’s agenda, but lower courts had universally rejected it as legally dubious. The Supreme Court’s decision was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Roberts wrote that citizenship is ‘the right to have rights’ and that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ The decision is a significant defeat for the Trump administration, which had argued that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants.

Reaction

Three conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch – dissented from the decision, with Alito writing that the court had made a ‘serious mistake.’ The decision is likely to have significant implications for the debate over immigration and citizenship in the United States.

Original reporting: KEYT (Ventura/Santa Barbara) — read the source article.