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Supreme Court Upholds Birthright Citizenship - But Not Without Dissent
Description
The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett. Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment while dissenting in part. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Neil Gorsuch. The court grounded its decision in the historical context of the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, tracing the language back to English common law, the Dred Scott decision and its widespread condemnation, Attorney General Edward Bates' wartime opinion on citizenship, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the court's prior precedent in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
Hawk connects the executive order directly to Stephen Miller's documented stated goal of an America populated almost entirely by people who look like him, and explains why birthright citizenship was the primary legal mechanism the administration intended to use to strip citizenship from Black and brown Americans descended from earlier generations born in the United States. He closes by noting that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito remain on the court, and what that means for the 2026 midterm Senate races in Texas and Maine if either justice resigns under a Republican-controlled Senate.
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