Clarence Thomas on SCOTUS Ruling: 14th Amendment Has Been ‘Repurposed for Political Projects’

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the principal dissenting opinion in Trump v. Barbara, where the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s executive order barring birthright American citizenship for the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens and temporary visa holders is a violation of the 14th Amendment.

In his dissenting opinion, Thomas writes that “both the Civil Rights Act and the Citizenship Clause guaranteed citizenship to persons born and domiciled in the United States regardless of their race.”

{snip}

In particular, Thomas argues that the 14th Amendment’s phrase “not subject to any foreign power” in regard to guaranteeing citizenship to those born in the U.S. “excluded from citizenship children of foreign temporary visitors, who were subject to the power of their home nation.”

“The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially unconstitutional the President’s Order excluding from citizenship the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens,” Thomas writes:

In doing so, the Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support. Because many potential applications of the President’s Order are consistent with the original public meaning of the Citizenship Clause, I respectfully dissent. [Emphasis added]

{snip}