Birthright Citizenship is coming before the Supreme Court. The ACLU could lose.

The birthright citizenship case: Barbara v. Donald J. Trump is coming up for argument before the U.U Supreme Court on April 1rst.

Despite the almost unimaginable cruelty & disruption of potentially ripping away citizenship from young (and potentially older) people who were born in the U.S. of undocumented parents or people here on temporary work Visas, this Supreme Court might reinterpret the 14th Amendment to exclude such people, sometimes called pejoratively "anchor babies." Strangely, the ACLU is trying to use the same argument that the 1868 14th Amendment applies to formerly enslaved people against Trump. Trump & his DOJ agree with that & argue the 14th Amendment doesn't apply to children born here of undocumented people (at least 1 parent would have to be a citizen for their offspring to have citizenship, says Trump & DOJ).

The ACLU also argues in today's email to supporters (Full Disclosure: I have been a supporter for >20 years) that:

Just 30 years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, in 1898, the Supreme Court affirmed that the children of immigrants born in the United States are citizens of this country in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Wong Kim Ark was denied reentry into the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act, despite being born in San Francisco. He brought his argument to the Supreme Court - and won. His case affirmed that birth on American soil is what determines citizenship, not the race or nationality of your parents.

But Ark was born to people who were themselves born in the U.S. and whose right to stay in the U.S. was not being challenged. He was denied reentry after traveling abroad by the Chinese Exclusion Act upon his return to the U.S. - a type of clearly racist law which, thankfully, is no longer in existence. United States v. Wong Kim Ark is not on point.

There is a case to be made that denying citizenship and/or deporting someone who has committed no crime by being born to undocumented persons is in violation of the 8th Amendment against "cruel and unusual punishment." It's hard to imagine a crueler punishment than to deprive someone of citizenship status or deport them to a country they have never known, perhaps to be tortured or deprived of human rights. And it's certainly unusual; it's literally never happened before.

And there's a case to be made that such deportation to... where(?) would be a violation of international law against creating stateless persons. I'm sure England, er, Mexico, would find basis to object to persons being shipped to them who have never known their country in order to become citizens of their country instead. The U.S. has no right to force other countries to accept non-citizens either, any more than the reverse.

But neither of these arguments seem to be part of the ACLU's presentation to the Supreme Court, according to their email to supporters today.

They could lose in a court that has no compunction in overturning long-standing precedent and Stare decisis (e.g. overturning the 49 year old Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights). And this conservative court bends over Rightward to support the president in every case where it is possible to do so.

Overturning Birthright Citizenship would be massively cruel, disruptive to both the individuals directly effected and to the country as a whole, perhaps even inducing population shrinkage for the first time in American history. But that doesn't mean it couldn't become the new law of the land.