Appeals Court Subtly Lets The Trump Administration Know It’s Just Being Racist By Demanding An End To Birthright Citizenship

Legal Issues

from the you're-the-baddies dept

It’s not enough to go after the “worst of the worst.” It was never a sustainable effort, what with migrants committing fewer crimes than natural citizens. The attempt to rid the country of as many non-white people as possible under Trump always had to go bigger. It has become ICE raiding swap meets and Home Depot parking lots because that’s where the non-whites are at. It has become repeated raids of any industry likely to employ migrants because white people think they’re above these jobs… or at least have the privilege of finding employment that’s more pleasant.

And it has become this: the attempt to deprive millions of American citizens of their citizenship by stripping them of their birthright. This right was codified by court decisions in the wake of the Civil War. When Black people were given their freedom (and citizenship), a bunch of bigots tried to prevent this new status quo from taking hold by pretending the children of those forced to migrate to the United States were not worthy of citizenship, much less the rights that came with this status.

The First Circuit Appeals Court has just issued a ruling [PDF] upholding the lower court’s determination that the Trump administration’s attempt to make birthright citizenship disappear is illegal. It’s a decision that runs more than 100 pages, but as the appeals court points out right up front, it’s not because it’s a difficult call to make. What the court sees here is nothing more than blatant racism unsupported by legal precedent or existing law. (h/t Kyle Cheney)

The analysis that follows is necessarily lengthy, as we must address the parties’ numerous arguments in each of the cases involved. But the length of our analysis should not be mistaken for a sign that the fundamental question that these cases raise about the scope of birthright citizenship is a difficult one. It is not, which may explain why it has been more than a century since a branch of our government has made as concerted an effort as the Executive Branch now makes to deny Americans their birthright.

This is how court decisions should be written. Yes, there’s always going to be a bunch of procedural stuff that needs to be handled before the final conclusion and signature page can be added. But it should be immediately clear to anyone reading the decision what is happening and why the court has arrived at its decision, especially when the target audience is an administration not exactly known for its reading and/or comprehension skills that is supported most vocally by people with the same lack of skills.

What happened more than a century ago was the Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court decided to bless government racism. A few decades later (and still more than a century ago), Congress passed a law that gave the children of migrants birthright citizenship, shutting down the exclusion created by the Dred Scott decision and forcing the nation to treat Black children as citizens and respect their enshrined rights.

To this day, we’re still not doing all that well with respecting the rights of non-whites, but it’s only now that the federal government (under Trump) is going to court to argue that non-whites should again be treated as lesser human beings and definitely not like other US citizens, even if their claim to citizenship is the same as any child born to a white immigrant.

The conclusion restates the opening, albeit with a bit more precedential flourish.

Our nation’s history of efforts to restrict birthright citizenship — from Dred Scott in the decade before the Civil War to the attempted justification for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act in Wong Kim Ark — has not been a proud one. Indeed, those efforts each have been rejected, once by the people through constitutional amendment in 1868 and once by the Court relying on that same amendment three decades later, and at a time when tensions over immigration also were high. Even the denial of citizenship to Native American tribal members no longer persists, thanks to a statute passed more than a century ago.

The “lessons of history” thus give us every reason to be wary of now blessing this most recent effort to break with our established tradition of recognizing birthright citizenship and to make citizenship depend on the actions of one’s parents rather than — in all but the rarest of circumstances — the simple fact of being born in the United States.

The Trump administration — riddled with white Christian nationalist bigots — wants America to bend to its will. It doesn’t necessarily care whether or not we forget our past (although it is making efforts to ensure that happens), but it does want to ensure that we repeat it. Fortunately, for now, it won’t be able to move forward with this particular heinous strategy. But with a Supreme Court seemingly willing to dance to any tune Trump chooses to play for it, we may not be fortunate enough to enjoy this victory for long.

Filed Under: 1st circuit, bigotry, birthright citizenship, dhs, donald trump, ice, mass deportation, trump administration