Washington: A divided Supreme Court Tuesday upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
The justices relied on a long-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, and more recent federal laws in ruling that anyone born in the country, with very limited exceptions, is a citizen.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights-to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in this land,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, citing congressional debate over the amendment, “We keep that promise today.