Trump says birthright citizenship is over. The Supreme Court will decide.

President Trump claims that there is no automatic guarantee to birthright citizenship in the Constitution. But will that claim hold up in the Supreme Court?

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, enacted after the Civil War, was aimed at reversing the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision, a ruling that declared Black people, enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States.

The Amendment says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

Challenges to birthright citizenship have long been considered a fringe legal theory. That's because 127 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled to the contrary. Moreover, as if to put icing on the cake, Congress in 1940 passed a statute codifying birthright citizenship for any child born in the U.S.

President Trump, however, has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship. So, on Day One of his second presidential term, he issued an executive order barring automatic citizenship for any baby born in the U.S. whose parents entered the country illegally, or who were here legally but on a temporary visa.

Now the case goes to the Supreme Court where it will almost certainly result in a historic ruling.

------------------------------------------------------

Follow NPR elsewhere, too:

• Instagram