All articles tagged with #fourteenth amendment
The Supreme Court is expected to decide this summer whether Trump’s order to curb birthright citizenship is constitutional, challenging the conventional reading of the Fourteenth Amendment that grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States. The case could narrow who qualifies for birthright citizenship and has wide implications for immigrant families and federal immigration policy.
Nine Supreme Court justices will decide whether birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment endures after President Trump's 2025 executive order to end automatic citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants or people in the U.S. on temporary visas; lower courts have blocked the measure. The piece also traces each justice's ancestry—from Roberts' English and Slovak roots to Sotomayor's Puerto Rican heritage and Jackson's enslaved-African lineage—showing how personal histories intersect with this defining constitutional question.
Vox traces Trump’s birthright-citizenship challenge to a 19th‑century white supremacist argument popularized by lawyer Alexander Morse, who argued that citizenship should be denied to the children of foreigners transiently in the U.S. and, in practice, to Chinese Americans. Morse later abandoned the approach, and Wong Kim Ark settled the Citizenship Clause, but Trump’s brief echoes that old theory even as the constitutional text and Wong Kim Ark undermine it; the legal case against birthright citizenship remains strong.
The Oregon Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge that sought to prevent Donald Trump from appearing on the 2024 Republican primary and general election ballot in Oregon, citing the Five voters' request based on section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court stated that the Oregon Secretary of State had no authority under Oregon law to consider Trump's qualification to serve as President at the primary election stage, and the presidential primary ballots must be finalized by March 21, 2024.
Twenty-seven states have filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of former President Donald Trump, urging the court to keep him on the Colorado GOP presidential ballot for 2024. They argue that the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to label Trump an "insurrectionist" under the Fourteenth Amendment, which could disqualify him from holding office, could lead to national electoral chaos. The states contend that the ruling is vague, denies due process, and could undermine voters' confidence in the electoral process. The Supreme Court has issued an administrative stay and will hear arguments on the case, emphasizing the urgency of resolving the matter before the primaries and caucuses.
A federal judge has ruled that portions of a controversial Kansas election law are unconstitutional, including provisions banning out-of-state entities from mailing advance ballot applications and prohibiting the applications from containing any pre-filled information. The law also violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments, according to the ruling. The plaintiffs were VoteAmerica and Voter Participation Center, who sued because the law would have made voting by mail more difficult. Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab and Attorney General Kris Kobach were defendants in the case and intend to appeal the ruling.
Two students are suing Tri County Area Schools in Michigan for violating their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by asking them to remove sweatshirts featuring the phrase "Let's Go Brandon," which has become a political slogan for those who oppose President Biden. The school claims the sweatshirts violated the district's dress code, which prohibits clothing with lewd, indecent, vulgar, or profane messages. The students are seeking a permanent injunction to stop the district from enforcing a ban on "Let's Go Brandon" apparel and compensatory, nominal, and punitive damages.