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Washington: A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday (June 30) upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not US citizens.

The justices relied on a long-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, and more recent federal laws in ruling that anyone born in the country, with very limited exceptions, is a citizen.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights – to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,'” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, citing congressional debate over the amendment. “We keep that promise today.”

Three conservative justices would have allowed the restrictions to take effect.

“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,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a 91-page dissent, more than three times as long as Roberts’ opinion.

“In doing so, the Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment,........

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