BREAKING: Appeals Court Says Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order Unconstitutional

The status of your parents (legal or illegal) is of no consequence.

If you were born on US soil, you are a citizen and subject to the juisdiction thereof (excepting diplomats etc defined).

I agree...Trump's EO is unconstitutional. It would take a Constitutional Amendment to change it.

and that, sir, is why the issue was meticulously addressed in the Constitution. (descendants of persons, who were at the time of the adoption of the Constitution recognised as citizens in the several States, [and who] became also citizens of this new political body, the United States of America, and (2) those who, having been born outside the dominions of the United States, had migrated thereto and been naturalized therein.)

To these hack judges, the Constitution is unconstitutional.

Both Zen Master and Robert Barnes have said from the get-go that this would end with the Court upholding BC. The counter argument is really complex, goes back to well before the Constitution, and involves little-understood and less cited English law.

Ignore till SCOTUS makes a determination

I’m glad I’m not a lawyer who has to read that. ZZZZZZ

Ninth circus, it’s to be expected.

I’m glad I’m not a lawyer who has to read that.

I'm glad that I am not one of the apparently endless supply of fools who claim to know what was made clear in the debates in Congress, having never bothered to read what was said in the debate in congress.

Ilan Wurman | The Case Against Birthright Citizenship | NatCon 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ifpA77Jjuc

The nonsense espoused on YouTube will continue to be thrashed in courts, suffering unanimous defeat at every level.

John Bingham was not the principal author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. He was not an author of that clause at all. It was the work of Senator Jacob Howard, and was introduced in the Senate as an amendment to the bill passed in the House which contained no citizenship clause at all.

As for the Civil Rights Act of 1866, John Bingham rose to oppose that Act as unconstitutional, not being within the powers of the Legislature. Despite holding that the CRA was unconstitutional, Bingham still voted for it. Such was Bingham in 1866.

The citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment was entered and debated in the Senate. The Senate approved it and passed the amended bill back to the House. The House brought it up, immediately moved it to a vote, and passed it with no debate.

The language of 14A is to clear to admit of controversy. All persons born in the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, are citizens of the United States.

UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT <[> Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 210-15 (1982)

II
The Fourteenth Amendment provides that "[n]o State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." (Emphasis added.) Appellants argue at the outset that undocumented aliens, because of their immigration status, are not "persons within the jurisdiction" of the State of Texas, and that they therefore have no right to the equal protection of Texas law. We reject this argument. Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a "person" in any ordinary sense of that term. Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as "persons" guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Shaughnessy v. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206, 212 (1953); Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 238 (1896); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369 (1886). Indeed, we have clearly held that the Fifth Amendment protects aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful from invidious discrimination by the Federal Government. Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U.S. 67, 77 (1976). 9
[457 U.S. 202, 211]
Appellants seek to distinguish our prior cases, emphasizing that the Equal Protection Clause directs a State to afford its protection to persons within its jurisdiction while the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments contain no such assertedly limiting phrase. In appellants' view, persons who have entered the United States illegally are not "within the jurisdiction" of a State even if they are present within a State's boundaries and subject to its laws. Neither our cases nor the logic of the Fourteenth Amendment supports that constricting construction of the phrase "within its jurisdiction." 10 We have never suggested that the class of persons who might avail themselves of the equal protection guarantee is less than coextensive with that entitled to due process. To the contrary, we have recognized
[457 U.S. 202, 212]
that both provisions were fashioned to protect an identical class of persons, and to reach every exercise of state authority.
"The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: `Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' These provisions are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality; and the protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws." Yick Wo, supra, at 369 (emphasis added).
In concluding that "all persons within the territory of the United States," including aliens unlawfully present, may invoke the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to challenge actions of the Federal Government, we reasoned from the understanding that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to afford its protection to all within the boundaries of a State. Wong Wing, supra, at 238. 11 Our cases applying the Equal Protection Clause reflect the same territorial theme. 12
[457 U.S. 202, 213]
"Manifestly, the obligation of the State to give the protection of equal laws can be performed only where its laws operate, that is, within its own jurisdiction. It is there that the equality of legal right must be maintained. That obligation is imposed by the Constitution upon the States severally as governmental entities, - each responsible for its own laws establishing the rights and duties of persons within its borders." Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337, 350 (1938).
There is simply no support for appellants' suggestion that "due process" is somehow of greater stature than "equal protection" and therefore available to a larger class of persons. To the contrary, each aspect of the Fourteenth Amendment reflects an elementary limitation on state power. To permit a State to employ the phrase "within its jurisdiction" in order to identify subclasses of persons whom it would define as beyond its jurisdiction, thereby relieving itself of the obligation to assure that its laws are designed and applied equally to those persons, would undermine the principal purpose for which the Equal Protection Clause was incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Equal Protection Clause was intended to work nothing less than the abolition of all caste-based and invidious class-based legislation. That objective is fundamentally at odds with the power the State asserts here to classify persons subject to its laws as nonetheless excepted from its protection.
[457 U.S. 202, 214]
Although the congressional debate concerning §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment was limited, that debate clearly confirms the understanding that the phrase "within its jurisdiction" was intended in a broad sense to offer the guarantee of equal protection to all within a State's boundaries, and to all upon whom the State would impose the obligations of its laws. Indeed, it appears from those debates that Congress, by using the phrase "person within its jurisdiction," sought expressly to ensure that the equal protection of the laws was provided to the alien population. Representative Bingham reported to the House the draft resolution of the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction (H. R. 63) that was to become the Fourteenth Amendment. 13 Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1033 (1866). Two days later, Bingham posed the following question in support of the resolution:
"Is it not essential to the unity of the people that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States? Is it not essential to the unity of the Government and the unity of the people that all persons, whether citizens or strangers, within this land, shall have equal protection in every State in this Union in the rights of life and liberty and property?" Id., at 1090.
Senator Howard, also a member of the Joint Committee of Fifteen, and the floor manager of the Amendment in the Senate, was no less explicit about the broad objectives of the Amendment, and the intention to make its provisions applicable to all who "may happen to be" within the jurisdiction of a State:
[457 U.S. 202, 215]
"The last two clauses of the first section of the amendment disable a State from depriving not merely a citizen of the United States, but any person, whoever he may be, of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or from denying to him the equal protection of the laws of the State. This abolishes all class legislation in the States and does away with the injustice of subjecting one caste of persons to a code not applicable to another. . . . It will, if adopted by the States, forever disable every one of them from passing laws trenching upon those fundamental rights and privileges which pertain to citizens of the United States, and to all persons who may happen to be within their jurisdiction." Id., at 2766 (emphasis added).
Use of the phrase "within its jurisdiction" thus does not detract from, but rather confirms, the understanding that the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment extends to anyone, citizen or stranger, who is subject to the laws of a State, and reaches into every corner of a State's territory. That a person's initial entry into a State, or into the United States, was unlawful, and that he may for that reason be expelled, cannot negate the simple fact of his presence within the State's territorial perimeter. Given such presence, he is subject to the full range of obligations imposed by the State's civil and criminal laws. And until he leaves the jurisdiction - either voluntarily, or involuntarily in accordance with the Constitution and laws of the United States - he is entitled to the equal protection of the laws that a State may choose to establish.

It may be time to amend the 14th Amendment, but it will not be accomplished by an Executive Order.