The Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to President Donald Trump’s agenda Tuesday after ruling 5-4 against his efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship, a constitutional right long targeted by far-right figures.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community," wrote Justice John Roberts for the court's majority opinion. "We keep that promise today."
Justices Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined in the majority decision, whereas Justice Brett Kavanaugh "concurred in the outcome based on the federal law that incorporates birthright citizenship," as explained by the LA Times. But he wrote that he did not believe Trump's order violated the Constitution.
As such, Kavanagh's opinion was considered "concurring in the judgment and dissenting in part," meaning the ruling was 6-3 to strike down the president's executive order, but 5-4 to specifically rule it unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented from the court's majority opinion.
With pressure from his White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Trump has long sought to overturn birthright citizenship, enshrined as a constitutional right in 1868 and understood to have explicitly applied to the children “even of aliens.” Last week, Miller called for the Supreme Court to issue a unanimous ruling in favor of overturning birthright citizenship, claiming that anything less would "mean a nonfunctioning democracy," Yahoo News reported.
The Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday was forecast months prior after Trump, after attending a Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship in April, stormed out of the courtroom to immediately voice his frustrations on social media.
The Supreme Court’s decision was also forecast as recently as last weekend after William Baude, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Constitutional Law Institute, predicted the court would likely rule against Trump in its decision.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, falsely, that the United States is the only country on earth to have birthright citizenship, despite similar rights being enshrined in dozens of countries, including the United States’ neighbors Canada and Mexico.
