Overview
- At the Supreme Court on Wednesday, justices heard arguments on President Trump’s decree narrowing birthright citizenship, and Trump attended the session in a first for a sitting president.
- The decree orders agencies to deny passports and other citizenship papers to U.S.-born children if the mother is in the country unlawfully or on a temporary visa and the father is not a citizen or green-card holder.
- Lower federal courts uniformly struck the policy as unconstitutional, and the government now argues undocumented parents cannot form the domicile the 14th Amendment requires.
- The ACLU counters that the policy would upend a century of practice under the 14th Amendment and would place the status of millions of Americans in doubt while splitting families at hospitals and in schools.
- The Court’s ruling, expected by late June, will test the 1898 Wong Kim Ark precedent that affirmed citizenship by birth on U.S. soil, and researchers project the change could add 2.7 million to the unauthorized population by 2045.