US Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship

In the first case, the court upheld the so-called citizenship by birth in American territory, established through the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, of 1868, which stipulated that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State in which they reside”.

On the first day of his second term, in January last year, Trump published an executive order to instruct US government agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident, holding a so-called Green Card.

A lower court suspended Trump’s executive order, which led to the Supreme Court fight.

Chief Justice John Roberts signed the majority opinion (6 votes to 3), in which he cited that the 14th Amendment was approved in the context of Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War from 1861 to 1865.

“Citizenship, yesterday as today, represented the right to have rights — the right to participate freely in our political community. The framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,'” Roberts said. “Today, we honor that promise.”

In the second case, the court upheld the validity of state laws in West Virginia, enacted in 2021, and Idaho, in 2020 (both states are governed by Republicans), which prohibited transgender women from joining women’s sports teams, which creates jurisprudence for other American states that have implemented rules in this regard. The issue reached the Supreme Court after challenges from transgender athletes in lower courts.

“The two states here — along with 25 other (American) states, the IOC (International Olympic Committee), the USOPC (US Olympic and Paralympic Committee) and the NCAA (the governing body of college sports in the US) — have concluded at this time that women and girls must be allowed to compete for these transformative opportunities on an equal basis, without the fear of suffering physical harm from biological males or being forced to compete against biological males,” wrote Judge Brett Kavanaugh, justifying the court’s position and referring to recent decisions by the aforementioned bodies that banned the participation of transgender women in women’s competitions.

“Consistent with Title IX (the law prohibiting discrimination based on sex at educational institutions that receive federal money) and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that States may maintain sports for women and girls reserved for biological women. They may set eligibility criteria for sports for women and girls based on biological sex,” Kavanaugh added.

According to Reuters, the court ruled unanimously (9 votes to 0) that state laws do not violate Title IX, although the court’s three progressive judges expressed disagreement on an issue in the West Virginia case regarding whether or not the rule violates the guarantee of equal protection before the law, provided for in the 14th Amendment to the American Constitution.

This Tuesday, the Supreme Court also overturned the limits, established in the 1970s, on the amounts that political parties can spend on campaigns for the American Congress and president in coordination with candidates.

According to information from broadcaster CNN, the decision resulted from a process initiated in 2022 by Republican politicians, including then-Senate candidate JD Vance, now vice-president of the USA. There were 6 votes to 3 to overturn the limits, which varied depending on the elected position in dispute and the size of the population of the state where the election was taking place.