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.”
The Trump administration had argued that the common view of citizenship is wrong, asserting that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore are not entitled to citizenship
Three conservative justices would have allowed the Trump restrictions to take effect.
President Trump seemed to recognize the court was likely to rule against him on birthright citizenship, too, using his Truth Social platform to criticize “dumb judges and justices” and wealthy pregnant women from China and elsewhere who come to the U.S. to give birth so their newborns will have American citizenship.
Only about three dozen countries, nearly all of them in the Americas, guarantee citizenship to children born on their territory.
Most countries follow the principle of jus sanguinis, or “right of blood,” with a child’s citizenship based on the citizenship of their parents, no matter where they are born.
None of the 27 member states of the European Union, for example, grant automatic, unconditional citizenship to children born on their territories to foreign citizens. The situation is similar across much of Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
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