The United States Supreme Court has struck down an executive order from President Donald Trump which sought to effectively end birthright citizenship.
Trump signed that order on the first day of his second term as president. It stated that children born in the country to mothers who weren't here legally, or who were here temporarily, would no longer automatically be citizens.
Six judges supported the decision with Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito dissenting. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, while agreeing with the majority, partially dissented.
Irene Sanchez is head of Enlace, formerly known as The Western New York Coalition of Farmworker Serving Agencies, an organization which aims to serve migrant workers. She said the decision Tuesday was a win not just for the immigrant community, but all Americans.
“Citizenship should not be a political preference,” Sanchez said. “This should be a guarantee to everyone that is born in the United States, to provide stability and equal protections for all generations of Americans.”
State Sen. Jeremy Cooney, himself and immigrant, offered a similar sentiment.
““Anyone who has read the 14th Amendment knew that birthright citizenship should never have been up for debate in the first place,” Cooney said. “This decision is a win for all Americans, and an important rebuke against a president who has consistently placed his xenophobic beliefs over the historic values of the greatest nation in the world.”
Rochester City Council President Miguel Meléndez, a vocal critic of President Trump’s immigration policy, also applauded the decision
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling, in favor of Birthright Citizenship as defined by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, is a victory for both our immigrant communities and for the constitutional soul of our country,” Meléndez said.
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts offered a sprawling history of common law which preceded and followed the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights— to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”
The majority opinion likened the executive order to the 1857 ruling Dred Scott v. Sandford, which said Black Americans were not guaranteed American citizenship and not entitled to Constitutional rights.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that Black Americans and children of undocumented immigrants were fundamentally different.
“Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans,” Thomas wrote. “They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority.”
The ruling was one of several released by the court Tuesday. In one decision, the majority upheld state policies banning transgender girls and women from playing on girls and womens school sports teams. The other struck down caps on campaign fundraising.
