Jackson rebukes Thomas over his birthright citizenship dissent

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson admonished fellow Justice Clarence Thomas for his dissent to the high court’s decision upholding birthright citizenship on Tuesday.

In a 20-page concurring opinion, Jackson accused Thomas of applying a “narrow vision” of the 14th Amendment in dissenting from the six-justice majority.

“Despite his longstanding endorsement of a ‘colorblind’ Constitution, Justice Thomas now surprisingly suggests that the Citizenship Clause was a race-conscious remedial measure, relating only to ‘freed slaves such as Dred Scott,’” Jackson wrote.

Thomas, joined in the minority by justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, wrote in his dissenting opinion the amendment — which grants automatic citizenship to those born in the U.S. — applies only to those “domiciled” in the U.S.

The conservative justice specifically referenced the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott v. Sandford decision of 1857, in which it ruled enslaved African Americans were not U.S. citizens. Thomas argued the court got it wrong because “Blacks were entitled to citizenship” as Americans.

“They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority,” the longest-tenured member of the court wrote.

Foreign temporary visitors, on the other hand, are “attached to their home country, lacked similar bonds to this country, and would not be called upon in time of war,” Thomas argued.

Jackson, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett, ruled the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to children born in the U.S. — even those born to parents in the country illegally.

The decision invalidated President Trump’s executive order requiring a baby born on U.S. soil to have at least one parent with citizenship or permanent legal status to gain birthright citizenship.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, also in the majority, disagreed with the aforementioned five justices on the question of whether the president’s order violated the 14th Amendment. He instead voted to block the policy under the Nationality Act of 1940, which mirrored the amendment’s language.

Jackson, whom Sotomayor partially joined in her opinion, repeatedly took Thomas to task for his interpretation of the amendment, even calling him “myopic” at one point.

Freed slaves, she noted, did not receive “new status” from the 14th Amendment. Instead, they were U.S. citizens simply because they were born in America, according to Jackson.

“Justice Thomas’s telling elides the entire point of the Second Founding: The Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery,” the most recent addition to the court wrote.