The Supreme Court’s Birthright Citizenship ruling today was a full-throated constitutional endorsement that the children of mothers here illegally or temporarily are “citizens at birth.”
No doubts there.
It was conventional wisdom that birthright citizenship would be upheld, but what was so shocking is that it was done on the backs of the three liberal members of the court who stuck together while the so-called conservatives splintered in numerous directions. So on the core constitutional endorsement, it was 5-4 with the majority being the three liberals (Sotomayor, Kagan, KBJ) plus CJ Roberts and Barrett. (Kavanaugh would have found the Trump EO invalid because it conflicted with an immigration statute, but he rejected the constitutional holding.)
Think about it. The three liberals prevailed on ideological core of the single biggest case of this term, one that defines who were are as a nation and whether we have sovereignty or are at the mercy of people who sneak across the border, overstay visas, or are here as birthright tourists.
“Disheartening” and “demoralizing” is how I described it in an appearance on the Tony Katz live stream today, but perhaps “infuriating” would be a better term.
The core constitutional decision was that children born here to illegal parents, who are here illegally or temporarily, are citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment. That’s the core. And there were five votes for that reading. And only two of those five votes on that court, the sweeping constitutional ruling, were so-called conservatives, Coney Barrett, and the Chief who wrote the opinion joined by the liberal block.And I thought that that was very interesting, that such a sweeping decision on the Constitution in a supposedly conservative Supreme Court, that most of those were the liberal justices.Now, Kavanaugh would have overruled the executive order on a completely different ground. He said he did not agree with the constitutional ruling, but he felt that the executive order violated one of the immigration statutes.The core constitutional ruling as to what the 14th Amendment means was a five to four decision. And it was the three liberals and the two so-called conservatives, which I think is extremely disheartening. And as much as we kind of expected this would be the result, to see it come out with that configuration is, I think, very demoralizing and disheartening….And so, you know, at one level it’s disheartening. They weren’t bold enough to step out of that.At another level, it hasn’t changed anything. We’re basically where we were yesterday, which is if you can sneak across the border or overstay your visa or get on a tourist flight here when you’re eight months pregnant, … if you can somehow get here, you are going give birth to an American citizen. That’s what it was yesterday. That’s what it is today.But it’s disheartening, particularly in the light of the absolute invasion of our country that took place under the Biden administration….And now it’s almost like a feeling of a loss of sovereignty that we were hoping to regain some of our sovereignty by enforcing the 14th Amendment as we think it reasonably should be interpreted. And we failed at regaining some of our sovereignty. And that’s what I think, when I say disheartening, I think that’s what’s so disheartening, is we had a chance to start to correct the direction of the ship….
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