That's pretty much the summary of it all. I'm quite disappointed, but not surprised at all, at the Supreme Court's ruling about birthright citizenship.
It's the third rail of American law: that EVERYONE born on American soil must therefore be an American citizen. The high court had the opportunity to rectify that assumption. But that requires a boldness and adherence to the Constitution as written that is all too absent from the halls of government in our era.
As I've come to understand it the 14th Amendment applies to people born to those who are already under American jurisdiction, and at the time that was indeed former slaves and their children. Those born to foreign citizens while in America are subjects of those foreign places. The amendment is pretty clear on that.
Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito. And Kavanaugh are correct in this case. But the politics of the matter was too much for Roberts and Barrett. The other three justices, it was a given that they would vote to uphold citizenship for those merely born on American territory.
But what do I know? I'm just a guy who has studied the Constitution for most of his life going all the way back to Miss Jones's class in fifth grade. Some are going to say that I'm against the 14th Amendment and "obviously" want to put people back in the chains of slavery. I'm looking at the reality of the law, not the political expediency of it.
My conclusion: this ruling will make a bad situation even worse. One day we may recognize that.
