Originally published at: Dissenting Conservative Justices Signal that Ending Birthright Citizenship is Their Movement’s Next Goal - TPM – Talking Points Memo
To Justice Samuel Alito, Tuesday’s 6-3 decision upholding birthright citizenship is both “one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court” and a “serious mistake.” To Justice Clarence Thomas, birthright citizenship’s days are numbered. “I am not sure that today’s opinion will stand the test of time,” Thomas wrote. “The Citizenship Clause…
2 Likes
So much for “originalism”, eh? If you don’t like my principles, I have others.
16 Likes
It’s in the Constitution. To repeal it, they would have to amend the Constitution, which is unlikely to succeed. Prohibition wasn’t eliminated by an act of Congress or a fiat of the President. It was only repealable by a constitutional amendment, so that’s what was done.
15 Likes
IOKIYAR is the only precedent
11 Likes
The argument that giving immigrants citizenship devalues the citizenship of others reminds me of when Republicans said gay marriage devalued their marriage. I could never understand their argument then, and I can’t understand it now. It truly is that they just don’t want these new citizens to vote.
16 Likes
I get resistance to wealthy people from other countries spending tons of money on staying at some motel/birthing center for a couple weeks to make sure their baby has double citizenship and then leaving immediately for home. It’s kind of disgusting, but probably not that harmful either.
But it would be a tough line to draw between that and other situations, and it’s not in the amendment. OTOH it wasn’t all that easy to do back then like it is now. I predict that Republicans in Congress might well give it a try and see what flys. But they probably don’t care much about what I described, because it’s just a relatively few rich people, and they are after all rich people. It’s asylum seekers (do we have those any more other than racist white South Africans?) and other nonwealthy people who they have a problem with.
Wait - the claim will be that if someone is not here legally, or maybe just haven’t achieved citizenship yet, are not under the jurisdiction of the US, based on not being citizens.
1 Like
You have to assume that any apparent win for rationality in the SC is just one car in a freight train of carefully orchestrated moves, coordinated with a direct pipeline from the upper reaches of the Republican movement into the chambers of two-thirds of the SC.
3 Likes
I’m struggling at the crossroads of birthright citizenship and frozen embryonic personhood. If a frozen embryo is indeed a person, what is its nationality? It hasn’t yet been born, so it cannot be granted birthright citizenship, right?
11 Likes
Oh, Shady…did you really want to go there?
What about those whose ancestors fought in the Civil Wart to dissolve the Union? How much claim should they have to America? And do we really want to have classes of citizens in this country? I tend to think not…but if you really want to go there, my family’s history in North America goes back to the late 17th Century. I have ancestors who fought in the Revolution, in the War of 1812, and in the Civil War (on the Union side). To what class of your hierarchy does my citizenship belong?
If I recall Slammin’ Sammy Alito’s genealogy correctly, he’s a pretty suspicious character. His roots in the US only go back to the late 19th Century.
Kavadope is being too cute by half: yes, there are statutes about establishing citizenship. There are statutes because the Constitution lays out general principles and the grubby details are hammered out in statutes. But the grubby details can’t override the principles they are supposed to implement. So, if I recall correctly, birthright citizenship carries with it certain requirements. Like, if you go back to the Auld Country and never live in the US, your citizenship expires. That is, to establish your birthright, you have to live here and pay taxes here, etc.
8 Likes
I live in California, so I suppose I should know more about this but is Birthright Citizenship really a problem that needs a solution? I know there are the stories of Mexican mothers who literally step foot in America just so they can squirt their baby out on U.S. soil but I always thought those stories were more based in racism than reality. It just seems to be a boogey man issue to me.
5 Likes
Squirt their babies out
That’s some rather unfortunate phrasing there. And that’s putting it mildly.
1 Like
I agree. Both the language and the history of the debate shows that the Amendment means what it says on its face. Basically, the dissenters want to say that an Amendment to the Constitution is, well, unconstitutional.
The problem is that if the drafters of the Amendment meant something different, that means it was different from the date the Amendment was ratified. That throws the whole issue of citizenship in doubt for millions of people–anyone four generations ago whose kids were born before getting citizenship–even if in the process–means the kids weren’t citizens, and if the kids married another in a similar situation, THEIR kids weren’t citizens. In a group–say the Irish–whose community was tight knit, that could happen easily. So you could end up with people three generations away who are NOT citizens even if their ancestor actually obtained citizenship and thus the descendants of their younger siblings were.
And for voting issues of “you have to prove citizenship.” How you do PROVE that your grandfather born in the 1870’s to an immigrant was born AFTER his parents became citizens?
“I don’t WIKE it” isn’t a basis for changing what the drafters meant. I don’t like the results in modern times of the Second Amendment, either–and IT doesn’t even say what the Extremes keep saying it says (excising “militia” is the only way to get there).
When you get down to it, even those fresh across the border are, indeed, “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US. Otherwise ICE would have no grounds to do anything to them.
3 Likes
It’s based in racism. They don’t want them voting, but they also don’t want them to, for lack of a better term, outbreed white people. Latino families generally have more kids than white people. There are a lot of reasons for that that I won’t go into but that’s the basic fear. It’s that whole replacement theory thing.
5 Likes
By saying or suggesting that birthright citizenship somehow “devalues” American citizenship, the dissenting justices are really saying that they disagree with the 14th Amendment. The words of the Amendment are clear and unequivocal, no matter what sophistry the dissenting justices use to call its meaning into question. Perhaps their real dispute is with the result of the Civil War.
10 Likes
Dissenting Conservative Justices Signal that Ending Birthright Citizenship is Their Movement’s Next Goal
Think about the title to this article, which reflects what I have read about this issue. These people aren’t conservatives. They certainly don’t have an eye to the original intent. They are radicals. They want to reshape America in their image. They have the power to act like a super legislature.
Alito and Thomas are getting long in the tooth. They might die or retire at any moment. Democrats have to win the Senate to keep Trump from replacing them with similar Federalist society stumps.
10 Likes
The word you seek is reactionaries, “characterized by reaction, especially opposition to progress or liberalism”.
7 Likes
Pay for my vacation and I’ll have any principles you like. “Recusal” - don’t know the meaning of the word.
3 Likes
This is nice in the same way that it is nice when a person walking past you on the street doesn’t pull out a gun and shoot you.
There was no “case” here. The Trump administration has lost this argument at every single level. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional [executive] order,” Judge John Coughenour said. He was not done. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is. And frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order.”
Coughenour is not one of your socialist DEI judges—he was appointed by Ronald Forking Reagan.
Six months later, in July 2025, Judge Joseph Laplante, a George W. Bush appointee … granted certification for the class-action lawsuit that would challenge the administration’s policy.
Another version of the case, State of Washington v. Trump, was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It ruled against Trump as well.
The first time the Trump administration was able to find any judge, anywhere in America, to state that it had the ability to do away with birthright citizenship was when it got to the Supreme Court.
And then it found three of them
10 Likes
They want a wedge issue to keep the country fighting amongst themselves as to not turn on thecreal enemy…
Especially this close to July14th
1 Like