U.S. President Donald Trump has suffered a major setback from the country's judiciary. In a majority ruling delivered on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump's executive order and upheld the broad principle of birthright citizenship. The Court also rejected all the conditions imposed by the Trump administration.
The Court rejected President Donald Trump's executive order, which stated that children born to people living in the United States illegally or temporarily would not be granted U.S. citizenship. Relying on the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (adopted after the Civil War) and recent federal laws, the justices ruled that anyone born in the country—with only a few very limited exceptions—is a citizen.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said that citizenship, then as now, is the right to belong to the American political community. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment made that promise to every person born in this country. Referring to the congressional debates over the constitutional amendment, he said, "We continue to uphold that promise today."
However, President Trump responded to the ruling by saying that the Supreme Court had upheld birthright citizenship, which is very bad for the country, but that with presidential support, Congress could easily fix it by passing a law—a path that, he said, had now been established through this process. He added that there was no need for a long and difficult constitutional amendment. Congress, he said, should begin work immediately to end what he described as costly and misguided birthright citizenship, and that it would have his full and total support.
Civil rights groups across the country welcomed the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Trump administration's executive order on Tuesday, calling it a major relief. At the same time, the ruling is a significant setback for Trump because one of the key issues on which he campaigned for his second term was ending "birth tourism." During his second term, his administration has been taking a strict approach toward both legal and illegal immigration.
