WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s historic bid to restrict birthright citizenship.
The top court, in an eagerly awaited decision on the final day of its term, ruled 6-3 to maintain the right to American citizenship for nearly everyone born on US soil.
Trump signed an executive order last year on the first day of his second term in the White House decreeing that children born to parents in the United States illegally or on temporary visas would not automatically become US citizens.
Lower courts blocked the move, ruling that under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment nearly everyone born on US soil is an American citizen.
The Supreme Court agreed in a majority opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts.
“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” Roberts wrote.
In an unprecedented move for a sitting US president, Trump personally attended oral arguments on birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court in April.
Trump stayed for the presentation by his solicitor general, John Sauer, but did not remain for the arguments of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Cecillia Wang, who defended birthright citizenship.
Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship was part of his wider campaign to restrict immigration, which includes the expulsion of millions of undocumented migrants.
‘Birth tourism’
During oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Sauer argued that unrestricted birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and “birth tourism,” in which foreigners come to the United States solely to give birth.
The 14th Amendment states that “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
It does not apply to those not subject to US jurisdiction — the children of foreign diplomats, for example.
The Trump administration argued that the 14th Amendment, passed in the wake of the 1861-1865 Civil War, addresses the citizenship rights of former slaves and not the children of undocumented migrants or visitors.
Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship was premised on the notion that anyone in the United States illegally, or on a visa, is not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country and therefore excluded from automatic citizenship.
