The nation’s highest court announced Jan. 30 it will hear oral arguments in Trump v Barbara. The case is a legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order which bans automatic citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil if their parents are non-citizens.
Trump signed the order last January, on his first day in the Oval Office, but it has never taken effect because it was immediately challenged in the courts by attorneys at the far-left ACLU.
The famous addition to the U.S. Constitution, the 14th Amendment, was adopted in 1868 after the U.S. Civil War to address freed slaves. The amendment replaced the infamous 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v Sandford that found African slaves living in the U.S. were not citizens.
“It’s really a momentous case, I think, about what it means to be a citizen of the United States,” Mike Donnelly, an attorney and legal analyst, said on American Family Radio.
Donnelly, who has thoroughly studied the legal issue of citizenship, told show host Jenna Ellis he has followed the legal arguments all the way back to the Declaration of Independence. Back when British colonists signed their names to it in 1776, he said, they rejected two ideas for their new nation. The first idea they rejected was you’re a subject of England’s king when you’re born. The second idea rejected was your status as a citizen depends on your parents and their own lineage.
“The founders said, no, we're setting up a government that is instituted among men, ‘deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,’” Donnelly said, quoting from the second paragraph of the historic document.
“That means there has to be an element of consent involved,” Donnelly argued. “They also said, in the Constitution, we are getting rid of all titles of nobility, which is hereditary bloodlines. We reject both of these views, because we are going to be citizens, and it is by consent.”
Trump has argued a specific clause in the 14th Amendment, the Citizenship Clause, makes it clear the parents of children born on U.S. soil must be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States government.
One current target of Trump's executive order is "birth tourism," when pregnant foreign women time a trip to the United States to give birth on U.S. soil. That allowance has been exploited by decades in China, where birth tourism in the U.S. is a known industry, and Southern California is a favored destination.
The legal issue is further complicated by a second 19th century ruling. Back in 1898, the high court ruled on behalf of a Chinese-American, Wong Kim Ark, who was born to Chinese parents in California.
