The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Trump administration's challenge to birthright citizenship.
The country's highest court will decide the lawfulness of United States President Donald Trump's contentious plan. The Supreme Court's eventual ruling on the case is expected to be made by the end of June next year. It would most likely determine conclusively whether the Republican leader's ambitious proposal can move forward.
Plan To End Birthright Citizenship
The case also sets up a major clash between a president who has aggressively used his executive power and a court with a 6-3 conservative majority that has so far avoided direct clashes with the White House.
In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said that the Trump administration is looking forward to making its case on the issue of birthright citizenship on behalf of the American people.
The issue of birthright citizenship has long been understood to be required under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. It states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States," according to NBC News.
The language was originally included in the constitutional amendment enacted after the Civil War. This was done to ensure that Black former slaves and their children were officially recognized as citizens of the United States.
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Since then, legal scholars of all ideological stripes have generally assumed the phrase to be self-explanatory, with the only exceptions being people who are born to foreign diplomats, invading hostile forces, and members of some Native American tribes.
Trump's executive order seeks to end birthright citizenship for children of people who are in the country illegally or are in the country on temporary visas. This is part of the administration's efforts to reform the nation's immigration system and fight against so-called "significant threats to national security and public safety," BBC reported.
Excluding Illegal Immigrants
The government argued that the 14th Amendment clause "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means that it excludes children of individuals who are not in the country permanently or lawfully.
Birthright citizenship was originally intended to overrule one of the Supreme Court's infamous decisions: the 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford. The decision claimed that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to the U.S. and enslaved was not entitled to any protection from the federal courts because he was not a citizen.c
The U.S. is not the only country that offers similar language, as more than two dozen others, including Canada and Mexico, offer automatic citizenship to nearly every person born in their territories, as per the Scotus Blog.
