Conditional Birthright Citizenship A Lightning Rod

The Supreme Court today was the scene of several hundred protesters calling for them to reject President Trump’s executive order making birthright citizenship conditional by leaving the 14th Amendment alone, and in allowing judges to issue nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order.

The Supreme Court on May 15 was the scene of several hundred protesters calling for the court to reject President Trump’s executive order making birthright citizenship conditional by leaving the 14th Amendment alone, and in allowing judges to issue nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive orders.


During today’s court session, the justices heard more than two hours of oral arguments in response to an emergency appeal filed by the administration.

The issue regarding the constitutionality of the order will take place later, but for many the act of making birthright citizenship conditional is simply an abuse of power by a president who has little regard for the Constitution, especially since the language in the Amendment’s first clause is exceptionally clear and to the point.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Earlier this month on NBC’s Meet the Press when asked by host Kristen Welker if he would uphold the Constitution during his presidency, in a conversation regarding the removal of undocumented people, Trump responded: “I don’t know…”

The 14th Amendment post-Civil War era Constitutional provision has been a lightning rod for conservatives who want to withold birthright citizenship for those children who do not have one parent that is a US citizen or has lawful permanent residency.

President Trump’s attempt to enforce his will to change the amendment is reminiscent of the egregious and blatantly racist 1857 Supreme Court decision written by Justice Taney in Dred Scott v Sanford that disallowed African Americans citizenship. Referring to Blacks as a “subordinate and inferior class of beings,” the court claimed that the Constitution never intended to include Blacks as citizens.

Furthermore, the 1898 Supreme Court case United States v Wong Kim Ark determined that Wong, who had been denied entry into the U.S. in San Francisco, the city of his birth and whose parents at the time were subjects of the Emperor of China, had become “…at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.”

While it remains to be seen how the court will rule in preserving the Constitution, Dr. Martin Luther King said it best when speaking about the war in Vietnam where in part he said that “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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