Breaking News: Trump loses bid before Supreme Court to end birthright citizenship
Court also lifts limits on campaign spending and affirms states' right to ban transgender women and girls from team sports
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday handed President Donald Trump a major defeat by upholding the constitutionally guaranteed right of children born on U.S. soil to be American citizens.
In a 6-3 decision, the court said Trump’s executive order to restrict birthright citizenship to the children of American citizens and green-card holders is unconstitutional.
“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” read the majority opinion, authored by Justice John Roberts.
The impact of this ruling in Florida is significant.
As the Miami Herald reports:
In Miami-Dade County, over half of the population is foreign-born and many of its native-born Americans are children of immigrants. Doing away with birthright citizenship would leave South Florida babies born to undocumented immigrants, professionals and students on temporary visas vulnerable to deportation.
In Florida, there were about 281,000 immigrants who were unauthorized to be in the U.S. and lived with at least one U.S.-citizen child in 2023, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Court affirms Republican-led effort to lift campaign spending caps
The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down longtime campaign finance rules challenged by Vice President JD Vance that place limits on how much a national political party committee can spend in coordination with individual candidates.
In a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court found that the restrictions violate free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment, based on the theory that political spending is a form of speech.
The challenge was brought by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the campaigns of two candidates in the 2022 elections: Vance, who was then running as a Republican candidate for the Senate in Ohio, and then-Rep. Steve Chabot, a Republican congressman from the same state who lost his re-election bid.
The Federal Election Commission, under the Trump administration, sided with the challengers.
Court upholds state bans on transgender girls and women from school sports teams
The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams.
The court’s six-justice conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans in the past year, ruled that state bans in Idaho and West Virginia don’t violate the Constitution. The court unanimously agreed that barring transgender girls and women also doesn’t run afoul of the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court that, “states may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females.”
J.C. Bruce is the founder of Tropic Press. He’s an award-winning journalist and author who holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and his native Florida.
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