If there’s one line to take away from Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing in the birthright citizenship case, it might be this: “It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”
Those words were spoken by Chief Justice John Roberts, who I predict will be with — and will possibly lead — the majority of the court in rejecting President Donald Trump’s bid to single-handedly redefine that citizenship.
Roberts’ words came as a retort to an argument from Solicitor General John Sauer, who sought to defend Trump’s executive order in the face of the Constitution, the law and precedent that have long stood for a basic premise of American life: If you’re born here, you’re a citizen.
During Sauer’s opening remarks, the former Trump personal lawyer referred to “birth tourism” while complaining that “uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States in recent decades, creating a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States.”
Later in the hearing, Roberts returned to the subject, asking Sauer: “Do you have any information about how common that is, or how significant a problem it is?”
Sauer called the question a “great” one but said that “no one knows for sure.”
That was an odd way to start an answer about a claim that even partly underpins the government’s attempt to redefine what it means to be an American.
The solicitor general then turned to citing “media reports” that estimate more than 1 million people coming from China, as well as a congressional report about“Russian elites” going to Miami through “birth tourism companies.” He said the “media reported” that “based on Chinese media reports,” there have been at least 500 such companies in China.
“Having said all that,” Roberts replied, “you do agree that that has no impact on the legal analysis before us?”
That’s a judicial way of saying it’s irrelevant.
Sauer maintained that “we’re in a new world now, as Justice [Samuel] Alito pointed out to, where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.”
