Who is an American? The Supreme Court will decide : NPR

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President Trump says there is no automatic guarantee of citizenship rights in the Constitution.

But will this assertion hold up in court?

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, enacted after the Civil War, sought to overturn the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, a ruling that declared that black people, slave or free, could not be citizens of the United States. The amendment says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. »

Challenges to birthright citizenship have long been considered a fringe legal theory. That’s because 127 years ago the Supreme Court ruled otherwise. Additionally, as if to put the icing on the cake, Congress passed a law in 1940 codifying the right to citizenship for every child born in the United States. However, Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee the right to citizenship.

So on the first day of his second presidential term, he issued an executive order barring automatic citizenship for any baby born in the United States whose parents entered the country illegally or who were here legally but on a temporary visa. The case now goes to the Supreme Court, where it will almost certainly result in a historic decision.