US Supreme Court Blocks Trump Order, Upholds Birthright Citizenship

The US supreme court has ruled against the executive order of President Donald Trump and has upheld the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. The court affirmed that nearly all the people born in the US are American citizens. By this ruling, the supreme court has rejected Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.

Previously, the President issued an executive order that denied automatic citizenship to the children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents. But recently, in a ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that this order violated the 14th amendment of the US constitution.

Roberts wrote, “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights - to freely participate in our political community,” he also added that the makers of the fourteenth amendment promised to every free-born person in the US and now they are trying to keep that promise.

During the ruling on the birthright citizenship case, the justices of the supreme court split into three different groups. Joining Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barett formed the majority. All of them ruled that the order is violating the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh stood in the middle ground saying that Trump’s executive order should be stopped not because it violated the constitution but because it violated federal law.

On the other hand, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch completely were in the dissent and were in favour of keeping Trump’s order in place.

The court’s ruling spans 194 pages, out of which 90 were written by Thomas in dissent, it is the longest he has written in his tenure on the court.

Commenting on this ruling, Trump called it “too bad for our country”, he suggested that the US Congress should take up this matter legislatively and keep this issue alive.

The Civil rights groups and Democrats on the other hand celebrated the ruling and called it as one of the most important decisions in the modern era. They noted that this ruling has reiterated a fundamental promise of the United States - if you are born here, you are a citizen.

Cecillia Wang, who is the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, argued the case before the supreme court on behalf of the parents of the children who would be affected. The parents of the affected children and Cecillia celebrated the ruling and called it a “major victory”.

“A president cannot change the constitution by executive fiat. Our brave clients and our legal team stand with millions of people around our country who spoke up for one of our most cherished rights. The constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship stands strong,” Wang said.

Donald Trump has been continuously trying to change birthright citizenship by pushing some racist lies. Previously, he falsely claimed that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and also questioned Kamala Harris’s eligibility for the vice-presidency.

In his second term, Trump’s main objective is to completely redefine the law that decides who gets to be an American citizen. He even went to the Supreme Court to attend the oral arguments in person. This is the first time a sitting President had attended court’s oral arguments.

The reason why the supreme court ruled against the executive order issued by Trump was because Chief Justice John Roberts explained that the court looked closely at the history of citizenship. He identified previously cited rulings wrongly tried to base citizenship on the basis of a person’s bloodline rather than where they were born.

He quoted that the 14th amendment was specifically written in order to erase those old rules after the Civil War to protect the people. The court stated that the children born on U.S. soil are automatic citizens at birth, even if the parents are unlawfully or temporarily.