Randy DeSoto writes for the Western Journal about US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ recent criticism of his colleagues.
Justice Clarence Thomas, in a lengthy dissent, took the majority to task for interpreting the Constitution to mean that citizenship is automatically conferred on anyone born in the United States, regardless of the legal status of the parents.
Thomas argued that the ruling “devalues” what it means to be an American citizen.
In a 6-3 decision on Tuesday, the majority held that an executive order President Donald Trump issued on the first day of his second term violated the Constitution. The order directed that only children born on American soil to legal residents are automatically citizens of the United States.
The Fourteenth Amendment states, in part, “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.”
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, concluded, “Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.”
Thomas, in his dissent, in which he was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, noted, as Trump previously argued, that the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. It was in direct response to the Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court decision of 1857, which held that blacks were not citizens. …
… “Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans. They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority,” he added.
Thomas further contended that the Supreme Court majority in its decision “repurposed the Fourteenth Amendment to protect its own set of preferred rights that the Reconstruction Congress never contemplated and that cannot find support in its text. Today, the Court does so again by recognizing a constitutional right to citizenship for the children of all foreign birth tourists and illegal aliens.”
