15 ms·
Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
- toomuchtodo 4mo agoOpinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf News: https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-trump-immigration-c73cf0c70bb550ebf0a55fafddbd935c https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-birthright-citizens... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/30/us-supreme-court-bithright-citizenship https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/30/us-supreme-c... https://www.axios.com/2026/06/30/scotus-rejects-trumps-birthright-citizenship-policy https://www.axios.com/2026/06/30/scotus-rejects-trumps-birth... https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/supreme-court-rule-trump-bid-limit-birthright-citizenship-2026-06-30 https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/supreme-court-rule-... https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-trumps-order-ending-birthright-citizenship/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow... Related: Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42776131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42776131 - January 2025 (34 comments)
- xvxvx 4mo agoTrump and his cronies were never going to win that battle. Like many things he does, it serves as a dog whistle to nationalists and allows him to paint anyone who opposes him as somehow un-American and an enemy of the ‘people’.
- Varelion 4mo agoWhite nationalists, specifically, yeah. Colloquially known as Nazi wannabes.
- Windchaser 4mo ago> Trump and his cronies were never going to win that battle. He got dang close. He's only one justice replacement away from making it doable. Gods, we are not as far from ripping up the Constitution as we'd like to think.
- 999900000999 4mo agoThank God. If only because this would open up people born here to having their citizenship retroactively revoked. The constitution is pretty clear. If you don't like it amend it. If anything we need to expand it to include anyone who gives birth in this country. If you're willing to deal with our horrible maternity care system and help keep up our declining population, you deserve a blue passport.
- BugsJustFindMe 4mo ago> our declining population Our what?
- toomuchtodo 4mo agoThe US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960624 - February 2026 (1008 comments) The nuance is ~71% of the world’s population now lives in countries with birth rates below the replacement level needed to maintain population size. US working age population cohort has likely peaked. The future of the developed world is fighting over global skilled workers and young potential immigrants who would settle and start families in your jurisdiction. Is the U.S. Labor Force Nearing Its Peak? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48726615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48726615 - June 2026 The Fertility Rate of Every Country in the World - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/fertility-rate-of-world-populations/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/fertility-rate-of-world-pop... - May 17th, 2026 U.S. Total Fertility Rate by State 2007 vs 2025 - https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1qt22ka/oc_us_total_fertility_rate_by_state_2007_vs_2025/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1qt22ka/oc... - February 2026 The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments) Our World In Data: Population tool: How will populations across the world change in the 21st century? - https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool ("demography is destiny")
- toomuchtodo 4mo ago
- jjallen 4mo agoYou can be pro/fine with legal immigration (and moderate/non-partisan) and still not think birthright citizenship is a good idea (like I do). Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives. Reminds me of legal abortion: practically everywhere in the world has it. If you are not in that vast majority you should be taking a very close look at yourself/things. So yes, let's amend the constitution. It's been a while and we do it on average every ten years or so. I have personally not ever been involved in one.
- goatlover 4mo agoWhy do you think it's not a good idea?
- jfengel 4mo agoIt's not really a question of what's a good idea. It is in the text of the Constitution, about as plain as it can possibly be. If you want to change it, you have to change the Constitition. Ironically, the same Court members who most often claim the plain text of the Constitution to support their ideas are the ones who put the most effort into finding a tortured reading of the 14th Amendment.
- nonethewiser 4mo agoPlease re read his comment. He’s saying the constitution should be amended.
- danorama 4mo agoI think it was edited to add that?
- jjallen 4mo agoNo, it wasn't. I had it in there from the get go. I did not edit my comment for any reason, I don't think at least. Like I said in the original comment, you can be moderate/non-partisan and think this is a bad idea. You can think Trump's an idiot and still think birthright citizenship is a bad idea. That's all.
- ryandrake 4mo ago5-4 though, yikes! This shouldn't have even been close. With an impassioned 91 page dissent by Thomas. What a chode.
- blktiger 4mo agoI should be unanimous, it's what the constitution says. If you don't like it you need to go through the amendment process.
- nonethewiser 4mo ago>I should be unanimous, it's what the constitution says Thats a tautology. “What the constitution says” is the thing in question.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- 5upplied_demand 4mo agoThe language couldn't be any clearer. The fact that it was questioned by people with a stated motive doesn't prove otherwise. "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."
- crote 4mo agoSure, but it leads to allowing for the possibility of interpreting "..the right to bear arms.." as "you are allowed to own the limbs of an Ursus arctos". There's plenty in the US constitution which is vaguely worded, but you have to twist its words an awful lot to deny birthright citizenship.
- sheept 4mo agoYes, and they can do that if they wanted to. The Supreme Court has the power to interpret the Constitution.
- newaccount670 4mo ago[flagged]
- root_axis 4mo agoWhy is it insane?
- Chu4eeno 4mo agoI'm not him, but it creates some perverse incentives (like chinese billionaires who pay american surrogates to get implanted with dozens of their kids who get american citizenship). https://fortune.com/article/chinese-billionaire-xu-bo-fathered-100-children-dozens-us-born-take-over-business/ https://fortune.com/article/chinese-billionaire-xu-bo-father... might be an outlier, but it's still weird, especially since the US is the only country that has this.
- Jtsummers 4mo ago> especially since the US is the only country that has this. Except it's not. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/31/us-style-birthright-citizenship-is-uncommon-around-the-world/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/31/us-style-... It's a minority of countries that have rules like the US, but the US is not unique in this regard and there's no reason to keep repeating that lie.
- root_axis 4mo agoThis doesn't seem like a major problem. Immigration officials are already sensitive to birth-tourism and have had discretion to deny entry to obviously pregnant tourists even long before Trump. Beyond that, if you're a billionaire you can just fast track a path to citizenship with a gold card.
- toast0 4mo agoChinese billionaires are bound to do weird shit. I don't think we should amend our constitution to try to prevent that. If the problem is 'birth tourism' and subsequent immigration visas for relatives of the US national child, changing the immigration policies seems like a better fix. Something like requiring a sponsoring citizen to reside in the US for a period before sponsorship. A citizen sponsoring a visa for a parent already has to be 21. I'm not sure I can be that upset by people who want to immigrate, so they put a plan in motion that takes 21+ years to reach fruition. Although that does jump the line if you were eligible for F3 or F4 and your country of origin is Mexico... the priority date on those is currently 2001. [1] I want more people in the US who can do long term planning, not less. :p [1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2026/visa-bulletin-for-july-2026.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- paxys 4mo agoThe most obvious read of the constitution in the world still being a 6-3 verdict shows the state of the Supreme Court today.
- abi 4mo agoIt's worse than that. It's 5-4 on the read of the constitution since Kavanaugh doesn't think it violates the 14th amendment, just a federal statute.
- matthewdgreen 4mo agoIt's worse than that. The text of the statute is literally the same as the text of the 14th amendment's birthright clause. So he's basically saying the text means one thing when it's a statute, but the exact same words might allow exceptions in the context of the Constitution.
- rayiner 4mo agoWhat does "subject to the jurisdiction" "obviously" mean, keeping in mind that everyone agrees children of diplomats aren't citizens at birth, but U.S. courts have jurisdiction over diplomats for some activities?
- petilon 4mo agoThat's partial jurisdiction at best.
- stephbook 4mo agoI guess the obvious answer would be the same as the last decades, while anything else would be called "surprising." Which is is fine, you can change the constitution, but thats for parliament to do.
- GetTheFacts 4mo ago>Which is is fine, you can change the constitution, but thats for parliament to do. To which Constitution are you referring? And which "parliament"? The US Constitution can only be changed by votes by both supermajorities in both houses (House of Representatives and Senate) of Congress and the legislatures of 3/4 of the several states. We don't have a "parliament." Are you referring to Canada's Constitution? Australia's? AFAIK, the UK has no Constitution and changes to Ireland's Constitution requires a national referendum. Please do elucidate. Thanks!
- adharmad 4mo agoLooking at the dissents (Justice Gorsuch) it appears that he would consider illegal immigrants’ kids are citizens, but kids of legal non-immigrants are not based on the fact that one is a temporary visitor and another is not!
- fmobus 4mo agoSo, when I enter as a tourist, I'm not in jurisdiction? Sweet! Crime time!
- thehoff 4mo agoGenuine question. Isn't this statement aimed at citizenship tourism or whatever its called? I used to live in a state where some new friends had told us about places that facilitated pregnant women's trips to the US solely for the purpose of staying and giving birth in the US so the child could become citizens. They then head home. I have no idea how prevalent this is.
- fmobus 4mo agoWell, it doesn't matter. If the SCOTUS decides that some people, in certain circumstances, are not in jurisdiction of US law, then they have to apply that notion everywhere. They can't pick and choose "oh no they are in jurisdiction of law A but not in law B". Jurisdiction is a fundamental concept, there's no middle ground. As for whether people are really doing birth tourism: sure, there might be some cases, but well, they are using something that the legal system allows. If the country feels like it doesn't want that happening, it needs to amend the Constitution. (Also, let's not kid ourselves that the birth tourism thing is what conservatives care about... People doing that kind of thing are usually rich. The real target are poor illegal immigrants giving birth in the country.)
- rayiner 4mo agoJurisdiction is not some singular concept that means the same thing in every context. You can have jurisdiction over some things in some contexts and not have jurisdiction over other things in other contexts.
- sleepyguy 4mo ago[flagged]
- Karthick81 4mo agoWe want the best talent to want to come here!
- iAMkenough 4mo agoWhile maybe a small scale issue, the solution isn’t an authoritative order that tries to rewrite the U.S. Constitution and bypass democracy.
- sleepyguy 4mo agoPerhaps, but this is definitely an issue/problem and the US should model it's policy after the EU on this specific issue.
- bigmadshoe 4mo agoDo you have much evidence that this is a real problem on the scale of the US population? I would imagine a tiny percentage of citizens were anchor children (i.e. people whose parents came to the US purely to give birth to them, then left again)
- sleepyguy 4mo ago[flagged]
- rayiner 4mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- toast0 4mo agoYour deleted post elsewhere mentioned the text of the 1866 civil rights act stating not subject to a foreign power, but the amendment uses this text instead. IMHO, that shows awareness of the issue and a different choice. Also, IMHO, The Indian Citizenship act addresses the complex soverignity of native tribes. Members of recognized tribes, on reservations have broad exclusion from laws of the State and in many cases are also excluded from jurisdiction of Federal law. This complexity has changed over time, but in 1924 it certainly wasn't clear that Indians were subject to the jursisdiction of the United States ... and at the time of the 14th amendment it's not really clear if United States is meant as a singular noun or a collective noun... given that people born in the territories are not automatic citizens, I think the interpretation is that you have to be subject to the jursidiction of any one of the States, which an Indian born on a reservation certainly wasn't.
- rayiner 4mo ago> Your deleted post elsewhere mentioned the text of the 1866 civil rights act stating not subject to a foreign power, but the amendment uses this text instead. IMHO, that shows awareness of the issue and a different choice. Couldn't it go either way? The 1866 civil rights act says: "all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians, not taxed." The 14th amendment says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." I agree that Congress could have intended the different language to have different meaning. But it seems plausible to me that Congress intended the 14th amendment to have the same scope as the law it had drafted just two years earlier, but just used slightly different language. > The Indian Citizenship act addresses the complex soverignity of native tribes. Members of recognized tribes, on reservations have broad exclusion from laws of the State and in many cases are also excluded from jurisdiction of Federal law. This complexity has changed over time, but in 1924 it certainly wasn't clear that Indians were subject to the jursisdiction of the United States Members of tribes on tribal land have been subject to federal law since 1817, though crimes committed by tribe members against other tribe members on tribal land were within the jurisdiction of the tribes. So you had and have a system of concurrent federal and tribal jurisdiction. But the same complexity applies to foreign nationals too. Countries have jurisdiction over the conduct of their citizens even as to overseas conduct. For example, the U.S. government exercises jurisdiction over Americans who engage in child sex tourism by American nationals in Thailand. I don’t find it compelling to read “subject to the jurisdiction” to mean “being subject to U.S. laws.” That proves too much and doesn’t justify the acknowledge exceptions. I think there’s a good reason Roberts focused heavily on the common law to buttress up the text.
- padjo 4mo agoThe crazy thing here is that 4 supposedly conservative Supreme Court justices wanted to overturn over a century of precedent on how the constitution was interpreted.
- shimman 4mo agoOur entire history of a nation is the people fighting against the ruling minority of tyrants. Look at how fast SCOTUS struck down the civil rights act of 1875 (only 8 years). Look at how quickly slavers used the federal government to uphold slavery, the fugitive slave act was one of the first things Congress signed and took zero time enforcing against the will of the people. Look at how quickly business leaders fought against Americans trying to better their working conditions. The US constitution was designed to impede societal progress by stripping power from the people. The "reverance" people have for the "founders" doesn't help either, acting like a document written to embolden slavers as sacrosanct is beyond pathetic.
- mr_00ff00 4mo agoWhat about the constitution specifically? You are saying this like there are other of nations that didn’t need to struggle for equal rights, workers’ right etc.
- shimman 4mo agoYou need to ask a real question because I have no idea what you are trying to say by beating around the bush, this is about the SCOTUS which is a US branch for the US government.
- outside1234 4mo agoThey took this case so they can appear to be reasonable while doing wild stuff in other cases.
- khriss 4mo agoExactly. Notice the ruling after ruling from the Supreme court strengthening the power of corporations and moneyed interests.
- razster 4mo agoSorry but I wanted to see a 9-0... There are 3, 4, that are just ignoring the constitution from what I read/saw. It is only a matter of time. A win for now but that is for now.
- zeroonetwothree 4mo agoWhat is “a matter of time” exactly? I doubt the court wants to revisit this again any time soon. And two of the dissenters are probably the likeliest justices to be replaced next.
- bediger4000 4mo agoThis "broad conception" is pretty well documented as what Congress wanted at the time of passage of 14th Amendment. It's been considered "settled law" for ages. The only real reason it's come to SCOTUS is that a particular political faction wants it to, and the media gives that particular faction more credence, and more coverage. So there's two things here: 1. An artificially whipped-up "question". 2. Conservative bias in the media.
- gred 4mo ago> Conservative bias in the media. Depending on how you count, something like 96%, 94%, 65% or 87% of mainstream media employees lean left. Of course this matters less and less as customers tune out and their influence wanes. https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Do_97_percent_of_journalist_donations_go_to_Democrats https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Do_97_percent_of_journali...
- ceejayoz 4mo agoNow do the management/ownership side.
- bediger4000 4mo agoThank you! Do they make the decisions about what stories to work and to run?
- thrance 4mo agoYes, educated people tend to lean left, since the right is so anti-intellectual. But virtually all media in this country (both social and legacy) belongs to the far right pedophile oligarchs currently running this country to the ground to fatten their pockets.
- gred 4mo ago[flagged]
- 4mo ago
- deep_concern 4mo agoIf you shift from being a living constitutionalist to a strict textualist based on the case in question, then what you really are is a machiavellian.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoKavanaugh's dissent is kinda hilarious in this context. > The original constitutional principles do not change absent a constitutional amendment, but the relevant principles— both the rules and exceptions alike—must be faithfully applied not only to circumstances as they existed in 1787, 1791, and 1868, for example, but also to modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers. This, of course, doesn't include machine guns.
- qingcharles 4mo agoI've laughed ever since United States v. Jones (2012), the GPS tracker-stuck-to-vehicle case. The justices actively debated what the historical equivalent of 24/7 digital tracking would look like in 1791. This prompted the famous hypothetical of an officer secretly squeezing into the trunk of a horse-drawn carriage to track someone's movements over several days. The issue here is that there's no practical way to ever update the Bill of Rights in the 21st century. Bug or feature?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- krapp 4mo ago>The issue here is that there's no practical way to ever update the Bill of Rights in the 21st century. Bug or feature? Given that this isn't an issue in any other modern democracy, I'd say "bug."
- willturman 4mo ago‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens https://theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1848971668/ https://theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation...
- jmyeet 4mo agoThis particular Supreme Court is out of control. The Roberts court will (IMHO) go down in history in the same cateogry as the Taney court that gave us such decisions as Dred Scott. Supreme Court justices have always been political actors, not some high-minded academics that come down from their ivory tower to hand down missives every now and again (as some imagine). But this is a step beyond anything we've seen in a long time. Here are some highlights: - 4 justices in this decision rejected the plain text reading of the Citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which would've overturned over a century of precedent; - They invented the "Major Questions Doctrine" that basically allows the Supreme Court to overrule the will of the executive and legislative branches if they deem the decision sufficiently weighty. It was invented and used to block significant legislation under the Biden administration; - They invented the History and Traditions Test under the Biden administration to overturn Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision. This was in spite of abortion being not only legal but essentially unregulated at the founding. Famously, Ben Franklin published an at-home recipe for abortion [1]; - They have lied about the facts of cases to push a particular decision. One of the more notable cases was Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that allowed school prayer. The lie? That the coach was "quietly" praying. This was not true and was documented, including photos to the contrary; - There are now essentially zero limits on campaign spending by anyone after today's decisions on PAC and campaign coordination and of course Citizens United; - They decided that independent agencies set up by Congress are unconstitutional despite almost a century of precedent because of the separation of powers but this doesn't apply to the Federal Reserve for some reason; - They overturneed 40 years of precedent of Chevron deference, a case that Gorsuch should've recused himself from since he was essentially avenging his mother's sacking as EPA administrator under Reagan in a case that became Chevron. 40 years of Congress and 7 presidents of both parties have written and signed laws with Chevron deference in mind; - They invented presidential immunity out of whole cloth in a country that was founded rejecting monarchs who were above the law. All the insider trading and pardon selling of the current administration is a direct and foreseeable result of that decision; - They decided that Federal regulations could essentially be challenged at any time instead of the previous six-year rule (ie Corner Post). This essentially allows you to challenge a 100 year old rule by setting up a situation where you're "harmed"; - Roberts has almost singlehandedly gutted the Voting Rights Act over several decisions. Previously he got rid of federal preclearance because of a history states had with discrimination and voter suppression. They immediately went back to discrimination and voter suppression. And then this year the court basically allowed racially-discriminated redistricting under the guise that it was "partisan" not "racist" unless you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's racist; The inability of this court to see obvious racism harkens back to a famous decision called Cruikshank that decided private individuals couldn't be punished for civil rights violations (notably, hate crimes) in a response to the Colfax massacre. Additionally, Cruikshank stated that the Bill of Rights didn't apply to state governments. This was slowly dismantled by various opinions over the next century. There were other cases of the Redeemer era (notably Plessy v. Ferguson that legalized segregation) where the court was completely unable to see racism and went out of its way to limit any effort to combat it. We're in one of those eras now (IMHO). All of this is incremental too. So today two cases were decided that essentially allowed states to ban trans athletes. The next step here is that trans athlets must be banned. Those cases are already percolating through lower courts and we'll see them in the next term most likely. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099542962/abortion-ben-franklin-roe-wade-supreme-court-leak https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099542962/abortion-ben-frank...
- nubinetwork 4mo agoThis is neither science/tech nor VC related, why are we becoming the dumping ground for political news?
- lazide 4mo agoHalf the people in Silicon Valley are immigrants - or more. Likely very relevant.
- andsoitis 4mo ago35 countries in the world, most in the Americas, confer unconditional birthright citizenship (jus soli), regardless of their parents' nationality or immigration status.
- whateveracct 4mo agoit's on the tin of the 14th amendment deal with it
- Blackstrat 4mo agoAnother bad decision that won't stand the test of time. The decision says more about the justices themselves than it does the decision. Voting the "right way" gets positive press attention, invites to the DC social circle, etc. Kavanaugh and Barrett are both attention seeking, weak willed individuals that Roberts plays like puppets. Personally, Trump should not have nominated either of them. And W's nomination and selection of Roberts over Scalia was appalling. Neither a textualist or an originalist could have ruled that way. And using the 14th Amendment as justification is historically disingenuous, as Clarence Thomas pointed out. Birth tourism will thrive.
- NoGravitas 4mo agoI'm sorry, you are saying that using the highest law of the land to settle a legal question it directly addresses is historically disingenuous?
- Blackstrat 4mo agoNo, I'm saying the use of the 14th amendment to justify the majority opinion is disingenuous, as Thomas points out.
- cligcow 4mo ago[dead]
- cligcow 4mo ago[dead]