Kavanaugh Gives Republicans Road Map to End Birthright Citizenship

The Supreme Court may have upended the White House’s attempt to rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment, but at least one justice pointed Republican lawmakers in a different direction to unravel the birthright citizenship clause.Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Donald Trump to the bench in 2018, wrote a dissenting opinion in Trump v. Barbara, despite ruling alongside the majority.His rationale: Trump’s plan to strip American-born second-generation immigrants of their citizenship could work if it were enacted through Congress.“In my view, the Executive Order does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Order does contravene a federal statute,” Kavanaugh wrote, referring to the law specifying birthright parameters. “Congress could—consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment—amend [this law] or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But Congress has not yet done so.”Kavanaugh argued that while Trump’s executive order violated federal law, it did not actually run afoul of the Constitution, even though the federal law echoed the same language employed in the Constitution.The justice noted that Congress had considered numerous amendments to the law over the last 30 years but never actually enacted any of them.Trump has tried and failed multiple times over the last year and a half to strip the constitutionally enshrined right. Mere hours after he was sworn into office, Trump signed an executive order stating that children born to immigrants on temporary visas or who are in the country illegally are not entitled to birthright status. That order was blocked by several judges in different court circuits over the last year.