For Immediate Release

Statement from Shakti Belway, Executive Director, National Center for Youth Law

“Today, the Supreme Court reached the only lawful and humane conclusion available: a child born in the United States is a citizen of the United States.

That question should never have been before the Court. The Fourteenth Amendment is clear. Citizenship cannot be rationed by politics, ancestry, race, wealth, or the immigration status of an American newborn’s parents. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that belonging in this country cannot be inherited, purchased, granted, or revoked at the will of whoever holds power. 

We are relieved by this obvious outcome but this should have been a unanimous opinion. The fact that this government would try to deny citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil, forcing this question all the way to the nation’s highest court, is a moral stain. Babies should never have had to wait for nine justices to decide whether they belong in the country where they took their first breath.”