US Supreme Court rejects Trump's attempt to restrict birthright citizenship

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday handed President Donald Trump a stinging defeat Tuesday by rejecting his audacious to restrict birthright citizenship in the United States – a right long woven into the fabric of American society – scuttling one of ​his top priorities in his crackdown on immigration.

The 6-3 ruling marked the second time this year that the court has invalidated a major Trump initiative, following its February decision to strike down his sweeping global tariffs.

The justices upheld a lower court's decision that blocked Trump's executive order directing US agencies not to recognise the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder.

Challengers to Trump's order argued that it violates language in the US Constitution's 14th Amendment that confers citizenship to those born in the United ​States who are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".

Trump, ‌who has repeatedly tested the limits of presidential power in domestic and foreign policy, issued the order last year on his first day back in office as part of a suite of policies to crack down on legal ⁠and illegal immigration. Critics have accused the Republican president of racial and religious discrimination in his approach to immigration.

Ahead of the ruling, some experts had estimated that Trump's directive could affect the legal status of as many as 250,000 babies ‌born each year and could require the families of millions more to prove the citizenship status of their newborns.

A class-action suit

The legal challenge to Trump's directive considered by the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, ⁠involved a class-action lawsuit filed in New Hampshire by parents and children whose citizenship was threatened by the directive.

The 14th Amendment has long been interpreted as guaranteeing citizenship for babies born in the United States, with only narrow exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats or members of an enemy occupying force.

The provision at issue, known as the Citizenship Clause, states: "All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state ​wherein they reside."

The administration has asserted that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means that being born in the United States is not enough for citizenship, and excludes the babies of immigrants who are in the country ‌illegally or whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas.

Citizenship is granted only to the children of those whose "primary allegiance" is to the United States, including citizens and permanent residents, the administration has argued. Such allegiance is established through "lawful domicile", which lawyers for the administration define as "lawful, permanent residence within a nation, with intent to remain".

An 1898 precedent

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 that ended slavery in the United States, and overturned a notorious 1857 Supreme Court decision that had declared that people of African descent could never be US citizens.

US Solicitor General D. John Sauer, representing the administration during the arguments, described what he saw as the limited purpose of the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause, saying it was adopted "to grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and their children, whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations ​of domicile here".

The challengers said the Supreme Court already had settled the question of birthright citizenship in an 1898 case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which recognised that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship by birth on US soil, including to the children of foreign nationals.

The ​administration contended that the 1898 precedent supported Trump's order because, according to the court's ruling in that case, at the time of his birth, Wong Kim Ark's parents had permanent domicile and residence ​in the United States.

Some of the justices pushed back on that during arguments, with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch telling Sauer: "Well, I'm not sure how much you want to rely on Wong Kim Ark."

Immigration rulings

The court's conservative majority has backed Trump on other major immigration-related policies since he returned to the presidency.

For instance, the court on June 25 cleared ⁠the way for the Trump administration to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants of a humanitarian status that protects them from deportation. On the same day, it sided with him by backing the US government's authority to turn away asylum seekers when officials deem US-Mexico border crossings too overburdened to handle additional claims.

In other cases, it let Trump expand ⁠mass deportation measures on an interim basis while legal ​challenges play out, such as ending humanitarian protections for certain migrants, deporting people to countries where they have no ties and carrying out aggressive immigration raids that can target individuals based on their race or language.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters and AP)