Trump and his cronies were never going to win that battle. Like many things he does, it serves as a dog whistle to nationalists and allows him to paint anyone who opposes him as somehow un-American and an enemy of the ‘people’.
If only because this would open up people born here to having their citizenship retroactively revoked.
The constitution is pretty clear. If you don't like it amend it.
If anything we need to expand it to include anyone who gives birth in this country. If you're willing to deal with our horrible maternity care system and help keep up our declining population, you deserve a blue passport.
You can be pro/fine with legal immigration (and moderate/non-partisan) and still not think birthright citizenship is a good idea (like I do).
Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives.
Reminds me of legal abortion: practically everywhere in the world has it. If you are not in that vast majority you should be taking a very close look at yourself/things.
So yes, let's amend the constitution. It's been a while and we do it on average every ten years or so. I have personally not ever been involved in one.
Birthright citizenship is one of the best things we have going for us. I see no reason why we should treat people differently depending on whether or not they have an imaginary stamp labeling them as special (IE, as citizens). Birthright citizenship ensures the problem of unequal representation is fixed over time. A self-fixing function, if you will.
The United States is different from 95% of countries. We're the place you are supposed to flee to when those other countries oppress you. That's just not the history of a place like Italy or Japan.
My great great grandparents left Quebec in search of a place where they could earn enough money to make it. They immigrated to America. They lived in communities of other Quebec emigrants and spoke French their whole lives. They never pursued American citizenship. Without birthright citizenship, would my great grandma have been American? OK then what about my grandpa? What about me? I'm not sure if any of my immigrant ancestors formally pursued American citizenship.
I don't think it's obvious. Like why do you think the dissenters are wrong to question what is meant about being "subject to the jurisdiction thereof"? The intention was to prevent former slaves from being deprived of citizenship so what is an argument to say this obviously includes someone who arrives for birth tourism? Why doesn't this include children of diplomats, as one example, if it's such an all encompassing law?
Looking at the dissents (Justice Gorsuch) it appears that he would consider illegal immigrants’ kids are citizens, but kids of legal non-immigrants are not based on the fact that one is a temporary visitor and another is not!
The crazy thing here is that 4 supposedly conservative Supreme Court justices wanted to overturn over a century of precedent on how the constitution was interpreted.
Sorry but I wanted to see a 9-0... There are 3, 4, that are just ignoring the constitution from what I read/saw. It is only a matter of time. A win for now but that is for now.
What is “a matter of time” exactly? I doubt the court wants to revisit this again any time soon. And two of the dissenters are probably the likeliest justices to be replaced next.
This "broad conception" is pretty well documented as what Congress wanted at the time of passage of 14th Amendment. It's been considered "settled law" for ages. The only real reason it's come to SCOTUS is that a particular political faction wants it to, and the media gives that particular faction more credence, and more coverage. So there's two things here:
There's a difference between textualist and originalist. There isn't a dichotomy between textualist and living-constitutionalist frameworks only but the two former may overlap. Also the same reasoning you are using applies to people who are living-constitutionalists and suddenly become textualists.
This particular Supreme Court is out of control. The Roberts court will (IMHO) go down in history in the same cateogry as the Taney court that gave us such decisions as Dred Scott. Supreme Court justices have always been political actors, not some high-minded academics that come down from their ivory tower to hand down missives every now and again (as some imagine). But this is a step beyond anything we've seen in a long time. Here are some highlights:
- 4 justices in this decision rejected the plain text reading of the Citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which would've overturned over a century of precedent;
- They invented the "Major Questions Doctrine" that basically allows the Supreme Court to overrule the will of the executive and legislative branches if they deem the decision sufficiently weighty. It was invented and used to block significant legislation under the Biden administration;
- They invented the History and Traditions Test under the Biden administration to overturn Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision. This was in spite of abortion being not only legal but essentially unregulated at the founding. Famously, Ben Franklin published an at-home recipe for abortion [1];
- They have lied about the facts of cases to push a particular decision. One of the more notable cases was Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that allowed school prayer. The lie? That the coach was "quietly" praying. This was not true and was documented, including photos to the contrary;
- There are now essentially zero limits on campaign spending by anyone after today's decisions on PAC and campaign coordination and of course Citizens United;
- They decided that independent agencies set up by Congress are unconstitutional despite almost a century of precedent because of the separation of powers but this doesn't apply to the Federal Reserve for some reason;
- They overturneed 40 years of precedent of Chevron deference, a case that Gorsuch should've recused himself from since he was essentially avenging his mother's sacking as EPA administrator under Reagan in a case that became Chevron. 40 years of Congress and 7 presidents of both parties have written and signed laws with Chevron deference in mind;
- They invented presidential immunity out of whole cloth in a country that was founded rejecting monarchs who were above the law. All the insider trading and pardon selling of the current administration is a direct and foreseeable result of that decision;
- They decided that Federal regulations could essentially be challenged at any time instead of the previous six-year rule (ie Corner Post). This essentially allows you to challenge a 100 year old rule by setting up a situation where you're "harmed";
- Roberts has almost singlehandedly gutted the Voting Rights Act over several decisions. Previously he got rid of federal preclearance because of a history states had with discrimination and voter suppression. They immediately went back to discrimination and voter suppression. And then this year the court basically allowed racially-discriminated redistricting under the guise that it was "partisan" not "racist" unless you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's racist;
The inability of this court to see obvious racism harkens back to a famous decision called Cruikshank that decided private individuals couldn't be punished for civil rights violations (notably, hate crimes) in a response to the Colfax massacre. Additionally, Cruikshank stated that the Bill of Rights didn't apply to state governments. This was slowly dismantled by various opinions over the next century.
There were other cases of the Redeemer era (notably Plessy v. Ferguson that legalized segregation) where the court was completely unable to see racism and went out of its way to limit any effort to combat it. We're in one of those eras now (IMHO).
All of this is incremental too. So today two cases were decided that essentially allowed states to ba...
Hard to address everything wrong you wrote, but in particular major questions doctrine protects us from presidential overreach. It has been key in stopping some of Trump’s foolish policies like tariffs. So that is hardly something we should be criticizing. Biden’s student loan forgiveness was similarly illegal executive overreach. These sorts of major things should be passed by congress.
> All of this is incremental too. So today two cases were decided that essentially allowed states to ban trans athletes. The next step here is that trans athlets must be banned. Those cases are already percolating through lower courts and we'll see them in the next term most likely.
Actually what today's decision does is uphold Title IX rights for women and girls. Have you considered how this decision benefits female athletes?
35 countries in the world, most in the Americas, confer unconditional birthright citizenship (jus soli), regardless of their parents' nationality or immigration status.
Another bad decision that won't stand the test of time. The decision says more about the justices themselves than it does the decision. Voting the "right way" gets positive press attention, invites to the DC social circle, etc. Kavanaugh and Barrett are both attention seeking, weak willed individuals that Roberts plays like puppets. Personally, Trump should not have nominated either of them. And W's nomination and selection of Roberts over Scalia was appalling. Neither a textualist or an originalist could have ruled that way. And using the 14th Amendment as justification is historically disingenuous, as Clarence Thomas pointed out. Birth tourism will thrive.
38 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 43.4 ms ] threadhttps://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf
News:
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-birthright-citizens...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/30/us-supreme-c...
https://www.axios.com/2026/06/30/scotus-rejects-trumps-birth...
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/supreme-court-rule-...
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...
Related:
Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42776131 - January 2025 (34 comments)
If only because this would open up people born here to having their citizenship retroactively revoked.
The constitution is pretty clear. If you don't like it amend it.
If anything we need to expand it to include anyone who gives birth in this country. If you're willing to deal with our horrible maternity care system and help keep up our declining population, you deserve a blue passport.
Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives.
Reminds me of legal abortion: practically everywhere in the world has it. If you are not in that vast majority you should be taking a very close look at yourself/things.
So yes, let's amend the constitution. It's been a while and we do it on average every ten years or so. I have personally not ever been involved in one.
It also helped vault America into being the wealthiest country in the world.
most of the countries in the Americas do
> let's amend the constitution
go ahead and give it a try. I'd start with getting rid of the 2nd Amendment, then we can talk about the 14th.
My great great grandparents left Quebec in search of a place where they could earn enough money to make it. They immigrated to America. They lived in communities of other Quebec emigrants and spoke French their whole lives. They never pursued American citizenship. Without birthright citizenship, would my great grandma have been American? OK then what about my grandpa? What about me? I'm not sure if any of my immigrant ancestors formally pursued American citizenship.
1. An artificially whipped-up "question".
2. Conservative bias in the media.
It makes sense to interpret some cases in historical context and others not, because some cases are not as much affected by the difference in context.
That's not being machiavellian - that's avoiding an one size fits all approach.
https://pacificlegal.org/originalism-vs-textualism-vs-living...
- 4 justices in this decision rejected the plain text reading of the Citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which would've overturned over a century of precedent;
- They invented the "Major Questions Doctrine" that basically allows the Supreme Court to overrule the will of the executive and legislative branches if they deem the decision sufficiently weighty. It was invented and used to block significant legislation under the Biden administration;
- They invented the History and Traditions Test under the Biden administration to overturn Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision. This was in spite of abortion being not only legal but essentially unregulated at the founding. Famously, Ben Franklin published an at-home recipe for abortion [1];
- They have lied about the facts of cases to push a particular decision. One of the more notable cases was Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that allowed school prayer. The lie? That the coach was "quietly" praying. This was not true and was documented, including photos to the contrary;
- There are now essentially zero limits on campaign spending by anyone after today's decisions on PAC and campaign coordination and of course Citizens United;
- They decided that independent agencies set up by Congress are unconstitutional despite almost a century of precedent because of the separation of powers but this doesn't apply to the Federal Reserve for some reason;
- They overturneed 40 years of precedent of Chevron deference, a case that Gorsuch should've recused himself from since he was essentially avenging his mother's sacking as EPA administrator under Reagan in a case that became Chevron. 40 years of Congress and 7 presidents of both parties have written and signed laws with Chevron deference in mind;
- They invented presidential immunity out of whole cloth in a country that was founded rejecting monarchs who were above the law. All the insider trading and pardon selling of the current administration is a direct and foreseeable result of that decision;
- They decided that Federal regulations could essentially be challenged at any time instead of the previous six-year rule (ie Corner Post). This essentially allows you to challenge a 100 year old rule by setting up a situation where you're "harmed";
- Roberts has almost singlehandedly gutted the Voting Rights Act over several decisions. Previously he got rid of federal preclearance because of a history states had with discrimination and voter suppression. They immediately went back to discrimination and voter suppression. And then this year the court basically allowed racially-discriminated redistricting under the guise that it was "partisan" not "racist" unless you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's racist;
The inability of this court to see obvious racism harkens back to a famous decision called Cruikshank that decided private individuals couldn't be punished for civil rights violations (notably, hate crimes) in a response to the Colfax massacre. Additionally, Cruikshank stated that the Bill of Rights didn't apply to state governments. This was slowly dismantled by various opinions over the next century.
There were other cases of the Redeemer era (notably Plessy v. Ferguson that legalized segregation) where the court was completely unable to see racism and went out of its way to limit any effort to combat it. We're in one of those eras now (IMHO).
All of this is incremental too. So today two cases were decided that essentially allowed states to ba...
Actually what today's decision does is uphold Title IX rights for women and girls. Have you considered how this decision benefits female athletes?
deal with it