Supreme Court Didn’t End the Birthright-Citizen Battle — It Just Made It Harder to Resolve

When President Donald Trump’s birthright-citizenship order reached the Supreme Court, the smart money said it would lose.

The question was whether the justices would take the narrow path Justice Brett Kavanaugh ultimately mapped out in his partial dissent, or constitutionalize the whole issue.

They chose the latter.

In Trump v. Barbara, a five-justice majority held that the 14th Amendment itself guarantees citizenship to children born here to parents here illegally or only temporarily.

That result will be hailed as a vindication of the post-Civil War promise of equal citizenship.

But the opinion is more sweeping than it needed to be — and, on the originalist question, less inevitable than its defenders pretend.

Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post

______________________

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute.