Summary
A third federal judge, Joseph N. Laplante, blocked Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
His ruling follows similar decisions from judges in Seattle and Maryland.
The lawsuits, led by the ACLU, argue Trump’s order violates the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to nearly all born on U.S. soil.
The Trump administration contends such children are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. Legal battles continue, with appeals underway and further rulings expected in other courts.
The Trump administration contends such children are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S.
Argument is so dumb. Can they speed without getting tickets like diplomats can? Oh… they do get speeding tickets? Guess that means they’re under U.S. jurisdiction then.
My question to all this bullshittery is: what about the military? I’ve got several relatives who were technically born in Korea, Germany, etc but are instant citizens being born on “American soil” in someone else’s country?
Are they proposing our women stationed overseas give birth to other nation’s citizens?
The self-proclaimed “law and order” candidate, a trust fund brat born on third base, now wants to dismantle constitutional bedrock to score nativist points. The 14th Amendment exists precisely to prevent such petty authoritarian whims—written in blood to guarantee that your birthplace doesn’t define your humanity.
Yet here we are: a reality TV has-been thinks executive orders trump Reconstruction-era amendments. Courts will smack this down, but the spectacle’s the point—red meat for base instincts while the Overton window gets another nudge toward feudalism.
Watching kleptocrats and corporate fiefdoms rewrite rules to hoard power is just late-stage capitalism cosplaying as governance. But sure, let’s debate whether anchor babies threaten “real” Americans. Nothing unites a crumbling empire like manufacturing enemies from its own citizens.
The Trump administration contends such children are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S.
Well then by that logic all illegal immigrants arent under any US jurisdiction. Therefore they can break no laws and are legally here
So I guess they’re targeting lawsuits in multiple federal districts, in hopes that having consistent rulings across the districts will appeal to the SCOTUS thin concern of legitimacy and they’ll either refuse an appeal or uphold the lower court rulings against Trump?
More or less, yes. When the circuits are in agreement, it’s still not binding on SCOTUS, but traditionally it’s been powerfully persuasive. If they can get a similar ruling out of the 5th or 11th, then even for this court it’s likely game over, eventually. The gross thing is the cruelty and uncertainty of the Trumpian attitude towards the rule of law, which is simply, “I know what it says. Fuck it. Make 'em sue me.” It’s in bad faith and erodes the simple, predictable functioning of government, to say nothing of, y’know, being directed towards evil ends.
SCOTUS is very conservative and increasingly activist about it, but Roberts in particular doesn’t like being dragged through the political mud and he can usually prevail upon Kavanaugh or Barrett to be less crazy for a day. Roe was a special case in that it extended the legal idea of the “penumbra,” which was by definition fuzzy, and I learned about attacks on the idea over twenty years ago, so the Democrats bear a certain amount of blame for not spending some political capital at some point to ensconce it in statute, if not in an Amendment (which admittedly may have been a bridge too far). It was always a bit fragile. RBG also did her legacy no favors by being short-sighted about how her successor would be selected.
Anyway, all the “But dis iz whut it sez!” reasoning from the Second Amendment cases mostly works against MAGA here. The idea that you’re not subject to America’s laws because you broke one of them when entering the country is pretty absurd, and that concept only works in a context of international law. It was meant for Diplomats and their families with immunity, and for Female troops or officially-employed camp followers of another nation’s invading army (operating on the assumption here that “traditional” war pregnancies will involve mothers who are subject to the jurisdiction of the US) - also Native Americans, but we “fixed” that in 1924 at least. There was no significant bar to immigration at the federal level when the 14th amendment was drafted, but super racist senators explicitly whined that Chinese immigrants’ kids would become citizens, and others said, “Yeah? And?” Add in various court decisions over the decades since that have clarified who is and isn’t subject to jurisdiction, and it should be a settled question. There’s a dissent here and there, and an occasional whinge from the right, but there is very little for an “Originalist” court to complain about here, at least legitimately.
illegal judges blocking my supreme executive powers. unbelievable
Has he tried a farcical aquatic ceremony?
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses !
Interesting argument. If these people are not under the jurisdiction of the US then we have no legal right to deport them as they aren’t subject to our laws.
So they could commit crimes and not have anyone to convict them?
It’s a sovcits dream come true!
That’s kind of what they argue, so they’re halfway there.
But wouldn’t that also work the other way around? If so, any white supremacist or government agency could commit any atrocity and not get convicted, because the victim wasn’t protected by any laws.
The sliver of hope there is that the law isn’t usually written in terms of the one being acted on but in terms of the one doing the action. Murder is illegal regardless of the status of the victim. It doesn’t say murder is the killing of a citizen, but rather a person regardless of nationality or citizenship status. Where things get a bit rockier though is in regards to constitutional protections. Things like due process it could be argued don’t apply to non-citizens.
That is a good point. So, in this case, the non-citizen would be like a tourist. They have some rights too, don’t they?
Strictly speaking no, they don’t actually have constitutional protections, it’s just that it’s simpler for our legal system to treat everyone uniformly (also I’m not sure it’s ever actually come up before except in the highly specialized circumstances of Guantanamo Bay). Additionally tourists have their government backing them so it wouldn’t be worth the international incident that something like denying them due process would cause. In general though with a tourist causing problems it’s often easier for the government to just cancel their visa and deport them back to their home country then ban them from returning, rather than dealing with the headache of trying to prosecute a foreign national.
Whether the victim was subject to our laws or not, the perpetrator is still committing a crime in this scenario. It isn’t legal to murder tourists for example. Animals aren’t US citizens but it’s still illegal to torture or molest them.
Trump hurt itself in confusion
No. According to legal eagle it applies to diplomats living in the US but not living under US jurisdiction.
Oh, and also enemy combatants. Which is probably what Trump will claim immigrants are in his bizzaro world justification…
Oh, and also enemy combatants. Which is probably what Trump will claim immigrants are in his bizzaro world justification…
This is effectively already what Texas has tried to claim…
Yeah - it’s just a matter of time before they’re claiming that immigrants aren’t even human.
