{"id":82127,"date":"2026-06-30T22:30:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T05:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=82127"},"modified":"2026-06-30T22:30:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T05:30:49","slug":"on-birthright-citizenship-scotus-affirms-immigrants-are-part-of-the-fabric-of-american-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=82127","title":{"rendered":"On Birthright Citizenship, SCOTUS Affirms Immigrants are \u2018Part of the Fabric of American Life\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Edward Kissam<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Protestors outside the U.S. Supreme Court last year as justices hear arguments in Barbara v. Donald J. Trump. On June 30, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Supreme Court\u2019s 6-3 decision on June 30 affirming the bedrock constitutional principle of birthright citizenship is a crucial and, in this current climate, exceedingly rare victory for immigrants and all Americans.<\/p>\n

But it is by no means the final word on an issue that goes to the heart of what it means to be American.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was one of the most important constitutional cases of the past 100 years,\u201d declared ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero after the decision was released. \u201c[President Trump] bet his legacy trying to secure this policy win \u2026 and he lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ACLU was among lead plaintiffs in the case,\u00a0Barbara v. Donald J. Trump.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a statement, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D \u2013 Calif.), himself the son of undocumented immigrants from Mexico, hailed the ruling, saying, \u201cThe Constitution could not be clearer: if you are born in the United States, you are a citizen of the United States. Period. No ambiguity.\u201d Padilla was born in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Trump issued his Executive Order seeking to limit birthright citizenship \u2014 guaranteed under the 14th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment \u2014\u00a0on Inauguration Day in 2025. It would be the first salvo in what has become a\u00a0concerted campaign<\/a>\u00a0of persecution targeting immigrants nationwide.<\/p>\n

In rejecting the move, the Court affirmed that not only are the hundreds of thousands of children born each year to immigrant parents here U.S. citizens. It also indirectly recognizes that the parents themselves, whatever their legal status, are an integral part of U.S. society, important contributors to the country\u2019s culture, civic life, and\u00a0economic well-being<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the arcane legal issues addressed in the case was whether immigrants \u2014\u00a0both those who reside here lawfully and those who currently lack legal status \u2014\u00a0are \u201ctemporary\u201d and not \u201csubject to the jurisdiction\u201d of the US.<\/p>\n

Embedded in the Court\u2019s 194-page ruling is an inherent rejection of that legally flawed theory. It is, in essence, a recognition of the day-to-day life in the real world of U.S. communities; that millions of immigrants \u2014\u00a0even those who have not yet managed to secure permanent residence or citizenship \u2014\u00a0live, work, and volunteer side-by-side with their U.S. born neighbors.<\/p>\n

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts pointed to English common law and the concept of\u00a0jus soli,\u00a0<\/em>Latin for \u201cright of the soil,\u201d the notion that a child born within a sovereign\u2019s domain owed allegiance to said sovereign.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis common law of citizenship,\u201d writes Roberts, \u201ccrossed the Atlantic and prevailed in \u2018each and all of the states\u2019 after American independence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberts also cited the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and its culmination in the 14th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment, adopted two years later. He then cited the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco to Chinese parents and excluded from returning to the US after a trip to China.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn\u00a0Wong Kim Ark<\/em>, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment was \u2018declaratory\u2019 of the \u2018fundamental rule of citizenship by birth that prevailed at common law,\u201d noted Roberts.<\/p>\n

Exceptions to the birthright citizenship law include the children of foreign diplomats and those of hostile invaders, the latter a pejorative that Trump and his allies have tried to attach to immigrants and their families.<\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s decision follows rulings last week that granted the president authority to strip protections from Haitians and Syrians living in the country, some of them for decades, under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Advocates say that ruling\u00a0threatens<\/a>\u00a0to make the more than 1.3 million people with TPS now in the country deportable.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s decision, however, offers a crucial counterbalance to the right-wing assault on diversity and to the Trump administration\u2019s obsession about immigrants as enemies or, absurdly,\u00a0extraterrestrials<\/a>. For advocates, it also offers a greenlight to push forward for national policies to affirm equity for all immigrants.<\/p>\n

But it will not be the end of the story.<\/p>\n

In his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito called the ruling a \u201cserious mistake.\u201d Justice Clarence Thomas rejected the majority\u2019s interpretation of the 14th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment\u2019s Citizenship Clause, which he argued was exclusively \u201cdesigned and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her opinion concurring with the majority called the latter a \u201cnarrow vision of the Fourteenth Amendment\u201d and one that ignores \u201cthe history of its ratification.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson has been among the most ardent voices on the Court arguing against the idea of a \u201cunitary executive,\u201d the theory that posits the Constitution vests all executive power in the office of the president. The theory, to which Justice Roberts has long adhered, is behind many of the Court\u2019s more recent rulings granting the president extraordinary powers.<\/p>\n

This is not a theoretical issue, particularly for immigrants. Testifying before Congress earlier this month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin\u00a0refused to commit<\/a>\u00a0the agency to adhering to federal court orders, arguing that judges had become \u201ctoo politicized.\u201d<\/p>\n

That effectively opens the door to continued violations of constitutionally protected rights by federal immigration agents with little legal recourse.<\/p>\n

More specifically, as Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Kate Shaw argues, much like abortion, the question of birthright citizenship looks to be emerging as a new\u00a0litmus test<\/a>\u00a0on the right for aspirants to higher office, including the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause it goes so deeply to the kind of pluralistic character of the nation,\u201d she says, \u201cit could become something that remains an object of real fixation for the conservative legal movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the administration continues to pursue its campaign of mass detentions and deportations, the political reality is that despite today\u2019s ruling advocates will have to work fiercely to continue to defend the place of immigrants here.<\/p>\n

Still, the decision offers a welcome rebuke to the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to govern by Executive Order, and to the notion that immigrants in the US are simply \u201cbirds of passage,\u201d temporary sojourners with no connection or commitment to the country or its people.<\/p>\n

They are, as indirectly affirmed by today\u2019s Supreme Court decision, part of the fabric of American life. And the country is better for it.<\/p>\n

Image credit: Victoria Pickering. Published via\u00a0Flickr\u00a0<\/a>under\u00a0CC License 2.0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByEdward Kissam Jun 30, 2026 Protestors...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-opinion","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82128,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82127\/revisions\/82128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}