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Thank 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
by 999900000999 4mo ago
Thank 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 agoAdditional citation: The Demographic Dead End: 2026 State of Fertility Report - https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/the-demographic-dead-end-2026-state-of-fertility-report https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/the-demographic-dead-end-... - July 2026 Report: https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/reports/ifs-stateoffertilityreport-2026-final2.pdf https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/reports/ifs-stateo... [pdf]
- mritterhoff 4mo agoI suspect OP mean declining fertility rate. USA population is still increasing, but is slowing down, and will sharply drop if the fertility rate remains below replacement of ~2 children per woman.
- sheept 4mo agoI believe OP is referring to how immigration is the only known working solution to a decreasing population. The US fertility rate is already 1.6 births per woman[0], and the population is only not decreasing because it still receives far more immigration than, say, Japan or South Korea. [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr038.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr038.pdf
- ventana 4mo agoThis is not specific to the US. The US is on 147th position [1], right near a lot of European countries, and I don't think there are easy way to rollback the demographic transition. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
- clates 4mo ago> is the only known working solution to a decreasing population. Which it obviously isn't a working solution in any nature of the word. Using arbitrary countries to avoid common mousetraps. Hypothetically all women in Estonia suddenly opt out of having children for a variety of reasons. They had previously had no problems like this and enjoyed a high fertility rate up until now. The government of Estonia sees this and starts mass immigrating Japanese men and women and are able to stabilize their population. Though, the Japanese women also normalize to the same state of opting out after just one generation. The government claims that this too is an emergency and seeks another seemingly arbitrary population of humans to import.
- aetherson 4mo agoThe US's population is not declining. However, without immigration, our population growth would be very close to zero, and a yet lower rate of natural increase is locked in over the next couple of decades (more old people who will die than children). And, I mean, it's obviously hard to predict beyond that, but it doesn't seem like anyone has any real clear answer to the trend of steadily decreasing TFR right now.
- ihsw 4mo agoThe birth rate correlates inversely with female earnings growth and correspondingly with male earnings growth; or, more to the point, declining birth rates correlates with the advancement of feminism (including birth rates approaching and then reaching zero.) This is an observation and not a judgement. Take what you will with this information.
- kbelder 4mo agoThis is true, although I think it correlates more strongly with female participation in the workforce than earnings directly. And it's not a criticism of feminism, just a consequence that we should be aware of.
- graemep 4mo agoYes, because of the outdated assumption that women take virtually all responsibility for childcare, which is damaging not just to women, but to men and children too, combined with the it becoming more difficult for families to manage on a single income. It is not just an American problem. It is slowly changing, at least here in the UK: I see a lot more dads taking kids around these days. I have still found people were surprised that my daughter lived with me rather than her mother after divorce though.
- Windchaser 4mo agoIt makes sense to me. When women have more choices, they tend to put off having kids or they raise their standards - for their economic situation before kids, for partners, etc. I think this is good; insofar as women have children, it should be because they want to, not because they're pushed into it. I'll say - it also wouldn't kill us to have slightly fewer people on the planet. We're already taxing much of our systems/ecosystems past their breaking points. Smarter people than me, entire groups of scientists, are saying that what we're doing now is badly unsustainable and we're heading for trouble.
- bryanlarsen 4mo agoSlightly fewer is good. A rate of around 1.8 kids per woman seems slow but it's an exponential so it's still quite significant. Parts of the world have reached 1.0 kids per woman, which is a halving of the population per generation, which will put a massive strain on our resources
- raverbashing 4mo ago> If only because this would open up people born here to having their citizenship retroactively revoked. No, that's not how laws work Applying laws retroactively is much less common than a "simple" rule change
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Octoth0rpe 4mo agoThat's not how we have traditionally thought citizenship works, but that is exactly what the Trump administration would've gone for next if the supreme court had ruled in their favor in this instance, thereby setting up the _next_ supreme court case.
- aetherson 4mo agoThat was very much on the table, though not locked in.
- mayneack 4mo agoEither laws work the way they're written and 4 members of the court disagree or they work the way the Supreme Court says they work and a worse ruling could threaten those citizens.
- wat10000 4mo agoThis wouldn't really be applying laws retroactively, but deciding what the law has always meant. If the decided meaning is that children of illegal immigrants are not automatically citizens, that means they weren't automatically citizens beforehand. Thus there wouldn't really be anything to revoke, they just never were citizens in the first place. The executive order that prompted this was only aimed at babies born after it went into effect, but I see no reason it would have to be that way.
- arjie 4mo agoI can believe that there is a lot of variance in maternal care and obstetrics in the US, but my wife and I had a pretty good experience. Documented here in what detail I could muster in those days: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Pregnancy https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Pregnancy
- 999900000999 4mo agoCongrats! But statistically America lags behind most other nations of similar development levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_maternal_mortality_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_maternal_... Not to mention the lack of maternity leave or real worker protections. A family member was fired for taking off time during a pregnancy. Everyone's fine now, but she definitely had a rough patch. A big part of this comes down to the lack of any real safety net here.
- nozzlegear 4mo agoWow, looking at the data on that page, it seems that people should go to Belarus if they want to have a baby.
- ronsor 4mo agoLukashenko did a good job apparently.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- ventana 4mo agoThe U.S. Constitution is very far from being clear. The whole purpose of the Supreme Court is to explain the meaning of what is written in the Constitution; there are 9 justices in the court and they often disagree on that. Just look at the second amendment: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The "well regulated militia" phrase caused at least two very different opinions: United States v. Miller [1] in 1939 and District of Columbia v. Heller [2] in 2008, with very different results. Just as the second amendment has this "militia" phrase that provokes arguments, the fourteenth amendment starts with 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. and the phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is vague enough to trigger discussions about whether it applies to illegal immigrants or not. Natural language is just bad in expressing rules. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Miller#Decision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Miller#Decisi... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller#Decision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller...
- mothballed 4mo agoThis is why American Samoans aren't citizens. They aren't subject to the full jurisdiction of the USA even though they are born in the United States. Yet you rarely find anyone giving a shit about the American Samoans, you never hear about it. ----- re: below due to throttling--------- >American Samoans aren't citizens because American Samoa is a territory, not a state. Puerto Rico has a special status that was extended to it to grant its residents citizenship – this isn't a status that's automatically granted to all territories, it requires Federal approval which AS has never formally pushed for. Unless you falsely believe PR or AS are not part of the United States, you are just agreeing with me with extra words regarding the jurisdictional differences. The only option for denying birthright citizenship would be not born in United States, or not subject to jurisdiction thereof. See this excellent prior comment[] on why the difference between PR and AS is jurisdiction and not whether it is part of the US. >This seems entirely subjective. I'm not going to do a formal academic study with you, it's plainly obvious as of late you see far more headlines on hackernews (a search shows a single HN topic on AS citizenship in the history of HN, but full page+ of search results on the birthright citizenship issue at hand) and elsewhere regarding the birthright citizenship issue at hand and far more rarely the fact American Samoans don't get it. [] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16700413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16700413
- rayiner 4mo ago[flagged]
- Windchaser 4mo agoI mean, aren't diplomats immune to US laws? Literal "diplomatic immunity". It makes sense to me to say that they do not fall under US laws and US jurisdiction, and their children likewise.
- rayiner 4mo agoDiplomats have some immunities but are not categorically outside the jurisdiction of US laws. For example, they can be sued for “commercial activity” outside the scope of their duties. If a diplomat sells you fake Hermes bags passing them off as real, you can sue them under civil law.
- cogman10 4mo agoThat exception comes from the fact that, I'm guessing, no diplomat or their children have sued over it. If they have, I'd love to see exactly where a prior SC decided that it's constitutional. If you are an originalist, textualist, or even just standard jurisprudence believer then it's crystal clear what the 14th meant. The only reason for any question about it is because a large portion of people hate the fact that someone can get citizenship by being born here. The dissents violate the supposed judicial theory of these justices. It shows naked partisanship.
- rayiner 4mo agoSo what does “subject to the jurisdiction” mean, from a textualist standpoint? The word “jurisdiction” in the law can have different meanings in different contexts. What does it mean here?
- cogman10 4mo ago> 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. Notice the "and" clause before the "subject to the jurisdiction". It means "everyone who is born in the united states and additionally everyone who is subject to a US jurisdiction". It's the clause which allows people born on US military bases to also be citizens of the US because that's a jurisdiction of the US. For example, Ted Cruz. It does not mean "Who are also" And since this is a clause which additionally adds on people it's talking about, you could exclude it all together. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States ... are citizens of the United States".
- IAmBroom 4mo ago> If anything we need to expand it to include anyone who gives birth in this country. ??? That's exactly what this ruling affirms; no expansion necessary: it already included "anyone who gives birth in this country".
- jakemoshenko 4mo agoThey are arguing that the mothers should also get citizenship, in addition to the babies. That's definitely not what was affirmed.