US Appeals Court Indicates It Might Declare Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order Unconstitutional (Reuters The Guardian, 8/03/25)
The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals last week became the first federal appeals court to hold Trump’s order as unconstitutional. Its ultimate fate will probably be determined by the supreme court.Eric McArthur, a justice department attorney, said on Friday that the citizenship clause of the US constitution’s 14th amendment, which was ratified in 1868 after the US civil war, rightly extended citizenship to the children of newly freed enslaved Black people.
“It did not extend birthright citizenship as a matter of constitutional right” to the children of people in the US without documentation, he said.
But the judges questioned how that argument was consistent with the supreme court’s 1898 ruling interpreting the clause in United States v Wong Kim Ark, long understood as guaranteeing American citizenship to children born in the US to non-citizen parents.
Birthright citizenship is Originalism.