46
votes
US Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, ruling against Donald Trump's order
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- Title
- Supreme Court upholds principle that almost all born on U.S. soil are American
- Published
- Jun 30 2026
I mentioned in the weekly politics thread that this should've been 9-0 for a supposed bunch of "Textualists." I don't know how the plain words could be interpreted in another way.
And if they were really "Textualists," they wouldn't be doing any interpreting! As usual, hiding behind a thin veneer of "principles" that's masking their true ideology.
Unsurprisingly all of the dissenting opinions all relied on "textualist" interpretations. In order to interpret the constitution, however, they need to frame the language in the time they come from. How do they do this? Well, they fall back on even older systems of law. They discuss what a "domicile" is, taken from the context of feudal law... you know, when kings rule over things? The explicit rejection of which is the entire premise of this country? Well no worries, we can use feudal interpretations of law to interpret the constitution! Surely what kings' wanted in their system of law applies to the United States!! š¤¦āāļø
Well.. Kavanaugh didn't at least. He just argued that the constitution couldn't have predicted our current day problems and should be open to interpretation of new technology or current-day problems (4th amendment and search/seizure involving cars, for example). Interesting choice as it's kind of anti-textualist despite his history of textualist rulings (such as with dobbs v jackson).
Well that's good! That should mean he'll allow restrictions on firearms.
Oh no, he has previously used that exact same framing to imply that they wouldn't want to restrict any firearms. He actually cites that exact case when setting up this framing š
From the article:
5-4?? The Roberts court is truly ridiculous.
I sometimes like to play devils advocate with court decisions, since there job is not to do what's right, or what people want, it's to decide what the written text of the constitution and amendments says. If citizens don't like laws, it should be up to the legislative branch to fix them, not the judicial (assuming a functioning government). But here is the text of the 14th amendment:
Yeah there is no room for interpretation here. That is pretty fucking clear. The fact that this wasn't 9-0 is a disgrace to the entire judicial system of the US and everything it stands for.
And there is a ton of contemporary documentation about how explicit they were that it was inclusive so that racists couldn't exclude people they didn't like, including the Irish.
It's so explicitly clear.
If we even make it past trump without totally falling into fascism, we're going to need some serious court reform (or impeachment and removals) to have any chance keeping fascism at bay.
The fact that 4/9 of the most powerful people in the country are this openly disregarding one of the clearest parts of the Constitution is astonishing. There is absolutely no excuse for it.
Seriously, itās fucking insane. I know I shouldnāt be surprised by anything anymore, but I read the headline and literally thought āyeah, even this lot arenāt corrupt enough to go against something this obviousā. Turns out 45% of them areā¦
Yeah I really have no idea how anyone can have the mental gymnastics to argue the definition of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof". If you can be prosecuted by the federal government, you're under their jurisdiction...
This should have been an easy 9-0 decision.
Responses here seem rather negative. It's narrower than I'd like, but it seems to me that a 5-4 win is still a win and that's worth celebrating. It's one less thing to worry about.
It's not one less thing to worry about. This is more akin to Roe v Wade. We survived by the skin of our teeth, but Kavanaugh gave them a map to an argument that would let Congress ignore the constitution.
They haven't been working on this one for years the way they did with abortion. It seems very unlikely that they give up because they lost this particular bout. I disagree we can stop worrying about it. The court is less supportive of birthright citizenship than in Kim Ark Wong and 4 of them say it isn't a constitutional right.
Since the majority disagreed with Kavanaugh, I donāt see that making a difference until years from now, after a justice resigns and another one is appointed? Hopefully that will be after Trump is gone. Who knows what happens then?
Similarly I was told not to worry about Roe v Wade because it was settled law.
If Congress manages to take this path, by gerrymandering and destroying the voting rights act into controlling the majority (or who knows what next) they may get much further next time and chip away at the edges of the 14th, again, as they did was abortion.
I have fewer rights today than ten years ago. This is not something to relax about. They'll keep testing and testing until they find something Roberts can flip for.
Every aircraft you fly on has many layers of redundant systems in place that allow it to land safely even if a huge number of things go wrong. You should still be very worried about the situation if you just landed a plane where several key systems failed in ways that should not be possible, and only that very last redundant backup prevented total catastrophic failure. You should absolutely not under any circumstances fly that same plane again until the failed systems are repaired and the root cause of the near miss is identified and remedied.
We clearly donāt have that sort of safety anymore with the US government, in any respect. Nonetheless, some dangers are of more immediate concern than others. With this ruling, babies being born in the US without citizenship rights became very unlikely to happen for at least several years. Beyond that, nobody knows what will happen.
And that's why we're not celebrating.
Having grown up in the shadow of nuclear war, and the threat of nuclear war has never gone away, by this reasoning there's never been anything to celebrate in my lifetime?
No, I reject the doomer mentality. Nothing is permanent. We all die in the end. Temporary wins are still worth celebrating.
Another example: it's okay to celebrate when a friend's cancer goes into remission, even though it might come back.
I'm happy for you. I'm not feeling celebratory about this however, nor are many others. You seemed uncertain why this was the case and the fact that it was only a 5-4 victory is why it does not feel like a victory at all.
As for "doomerism" ą² ą²æā _ā ą² . I celebrated the DAR rejecting a call to ban trans women from their membership. I also celebrate cancer going into remission. This isn't a "anything could go wrong at any time so don't be happy about anything." It's that personally I feel a best a half breath of relief as this decision came on the back of trans rights being rolled back.
So yeah, the cancer is in remission but the prognosis is that the chemo has had some serious side effects and while I would love to be surprised by the remission lasting, my close friend Jane Roe died of cancer a few years ago after a long fight and my friend BPJ (she goes by Lily now) just got a new diagnosis and it looks like it could be bad. And the doctors barely saved the first friend...
Yeah I'm not feeling "woo". I'm glad you are. My joy (and the volunteer work that I do) lie elsewhere.
We are one heart attack away from losing that vote. Among a set of pretty old people.
We're all one heart attack away from death. It doesn't mean you go around assuming you're going to die tomorrow.
My estimate from actuarial tables says thereās about a 12% chance that one of those 4 votes dies in the next 2 years. When you factor in a 50% chance that we get a republican president in 2028, and the fact that they will all be older, I think itās about a 25% chance we get at least one more right wing partisan hack by 2032
I think it feels very hard to celebrate something like this. It's like... if you get mugged, and then partway through, something interrupts the mugging, and you don't end up being killed or robbed. Do you celebrate that you didn't get killed or robbed today? Probably not ā not getting killed or robbed is the baseline expectation for most days. You're probably feeling worse off than before you were mugged, even though the negative outcomes "didn't happen."
I can't speak for everyone else here, but I mostly feel, like, the tiniest bit of relief, which is quite overshadowed by the impending sense of doom that this almost happened. I let out half a breath when I saw the headline, but I'm really feeling nowhere near celebratory.
š question here!
If four justices are willing to go against the plain text of the 14th, do we have cause to worry about other amendments? The 22nd comes to mind as it is also very clear...
Yes, and a few Republicans have argued the 22nd limiting each president to two terms means consecutive terms, so since Biden was in between Trump's terms so far Trump is OK to run for president in 2028.
It's not the Supreme Court preventing that interpretation from being realized, it's the bureaucracy of the Republican party. That remains, so far, a fringe argument without the institutional support needed to have Trump's name printed on another presidential ballot. If the party position changed, I don't see the Supreme Court standing in the way.