Summary
A third federal judge, Joseph N. Laplante, blocked Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
His ruling follows similar decisions from judges in Seattle and Maryland.
The lawsuits, led by the ACLU, argue Trump’s order violates the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to nearly all born on U.S. soil.
The Trump administration contends such children are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. Legal battles continue, with appeals underway and further rulings expected in other courts.
My question to all this bullshittery is: what about the military? I’ve got several relatives who were technically born in Korea, Germany, etc but are instant citizens being born on “American soil” in someone else’s country?
Are they proposing our women stationed overseas give birth to other nation’s citizens?
The self-proclaimed “law and order” candidate, a trust fund brat born on third base, now wants to dismantle constitutional bedrock to score nativist points. The 14th Amendment exists precisely to prevent such petty authoritarian whims—written in blood to guarantee that your birthplace doesn’t define your humanity.
Yet here we are: a reality TV has-been thinks executive orders trump Reconstruction-era amendments. Courts will smack this down, but the spectacle’s the point—red meat for base instincts while the Overton window gets another nudge toward feudalism.
Watching kleptocrats and corporate fiefdoms rewrite rules to hoard power is just late-stage capitalism cosplaying as governance. But sure, let’s debate whether anchor babies threaten “real” Americans. Nothing unites a crumbling empire like manufacturing enemies from its own citizens.
illegal judges blocking my supreme executive powers. unbelievable
Has he tried a farcical aquatic ceremony?
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses !
The Trump administration contends such children are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S.
Well then by that logic all illegal immigrants arent under any US jurisdiction. Therefore they can break no laws and are legally here
Well then by that logic all illegal immigrants arent under any US jurisdiction.
Honestly that is the original meaning of the word “outlaw”; iIt literally meant someone who was outside the law. Today we most use it as a synonym for “criminal” or “law breaker” but at the time the Constitution was written or at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified most people would have understood it with its original meaning.
“Outlaws” were neither subject to nor protected by the law. They had no legal status nor standing in the law.
My understanding is that outlaws were still subject to the law in the UK and that’s probably the understanding of it in the early USA. Outlawry was just a likely death sentence in absentia for felons on the run as opposed to a purposeful banishment. They’d even pay bounties to have felons tracked down and brought back because they were concerned with them being subjected to legal consequences.
My understanding is that outlaws were still subject to the law in the UK …
English Common Law had the “writ of outlawry” and the subject was deprived of all legal rights, being outside the “law”, but others could kill him on sight as if he were a wolf or other wild animal.
but others could kill him on sight as if he were a wolf or other wild animal.
You couldn’t do this, English (and much of European) law required a trial
I think he means in pre modern times. Not the current era.
Yeah I was talking about medieval to 19th century
Obviously you don’t need to put an animal on trial for murder anymore
So I guess they’re targeting lawsuits in multiple federal districts, in hopes that having consistent rulings across the districts will appeal to the SCOTUS thin concern of legitimacy and they’ll either refuse an appeal or uphold the lower court rulings against Trump?
The second the Supreme Court rules a section of the constitution that is in plain language is invalid will throw out what little credibility they had left. And will lead to states ignoring them entirely. It’s not gonna be a pretty decade.
They already disregarded the 14th amendment last year when they ruled that Colorado and other states couldn’t keep an insurrectionist of the ballot.
I seem to remember those decisions were made during the primaries and were not retried for the general election. Honestly not sure though.
They basically said it wasn’t up to a state to decide if someone could run for a federal office. Instead it would require an act of Congress.
Which was odd, since the amendment says that Congress can act to override the decision to bar an insurrectionist running for office.
So yeah, this court has shown they are all about intentionally misinterpreting the 14th amendment. They won’t save us from the worst of MAGA.
I swear they’re going to argue the founders themselves misinterpreted the language of the constitution and the amendments are all invalid and no longer applicable.
That’s what I’m thinking regarding the locations the law suits are being filed in. Traditionally (I know, didn’t matter with Roe) one predictor if SCOTUS will take an appeal is if there are conflicting rulings being made in different states/districts.
More or less, yes. When the circuits are in agreement, it’s still not binding on SCOTUS, but traditionally it’s been powerfully persuasive. If they can get a similar ruling out of the 5th or 11th, then even for this court it’s likely game over, eventually. The gross thing is the cruelty and uncertainty of the Trumpian attitude towards the rule of law, which is simply, “I know what it says. Fuck it. Make 'em sue me.” It’s in bad faith and erodes the simple, predictable functioning of government, to say nothing of, y’know, being directed towards evil ends.
SCOTUS is very conservative and increasingly activist about it, but Roberts in particular doesn’t like being dragged through the political mud and he can usually prevail upon Kavanaugh or Barrett to be less crazy for a day. Roe was a special case in that it extended the legal idea of the “penumbra,” which was by definition fuzzy, and I learned about attacks on the idea over twenty years ago, so the Democrats bear a certain amount of blame for not spending some political capital at some point to ensconce it in statute, if not in an Amendment (which admittedly may have been a bridge too far). It was always a bit fragile. RBG also did her legacy no favors by being short-sighted about how her successor would be selected.
Anyway, all the “But dis iz whut it sez!” reasoning from the Second Amendment cases mostly works against MAGA here. The idea that you’re not subject to America’s laws because you broke one of them when entering the country is pretty absurd, and that concept only works in a context of international law. It was meant for Diplomats and their families with immunity, and for Female troops or officially-employed camp followers of another nation’s invading army (operating on the assumption here that “traditional” war pregnancies will involve mothers who are subject to the jurisdiction of the US) - also Native Americans, but we “fixed” that in 1924 at least. There was no significant bar to immigration at the federal level when the 14th amendment was drafted, but super racist senators explicitly whined that Chinese immigrants’ kids would become citizens, and others said, “Yeah? And?” Add in various court decisions over the decades since that have clarified who is and isn’t subject to jurisdiction, and it should be a settled question. There’s a dissent here and there, and an occasional whinge from the right, but there is very little for an “Originalist” court to complain about here, at least legitimately.
Interesting argument. If these people are not under the jurisdiction of the US then we have no legal right to deport them as they aren’t subject to our laws.
So they could commit crimes and not have anyone to convict them?
It’s a sovcits dream come true!
That’s kind of what they argue, so they’re halfway there.
But wouldn’t that also work the other way around? If so, any white supremacist or government agency could commit any atrocity and not get convicted, because the victim wasn’t protected by any laws.
The sliver of hope there is that the law isn’t usually written in terms of the one being acted on but in terms of the one doing the action. Murder is illegal regardless of the status of the victim. It doesn’t say murder is the killing of a citizen, but rather a person regardless of nationality or citizenship status. Where things get a bit rockier though is in regards to constitutional protections. Things like due process it could be argued don’t apply to non-citizens.
That is a good point. So, in this case, the non-citizen would be like a tourist. They have some rights too, don’t they?
Strictly speaking no, they don’t actually have constitutional protections, it’s just that it’s simpler for our legal system to treat everyone uniformly (also I’m not sure it’s ever actually come up before except in the highly specialized circumstances of Guantanamo Bay). Additionally tourists have their government backing them so it wouldn’t be worth the international incident that something like denying them due process would cause. In general though with a tourist causing problems it’s often easier for the government to just cancel their visa and deport them back to their home country then ban them from returning, rather than dealing with the headache of trying to prosecute a foreign national.
Whether the victim was subject to our laws or not, the perpetrator is still committing a crime in this scenario. It isn’t legal to murder tourists for example. Animals aren’t US citizens but it’s still illegal to torture or molest them.
If so, any white supremacist or government agency could commit any atrocity and not get convicted, because the victim wasn’t protected by any laws.
Ding ding ding! You got it!
Sure, and also no one to protect them if / when they’re caught.
Trump hurt itself in confusion
If these people are not under the jurisdiction of the US then we have no legal right to deport them as they aren’t subject to our laws.
No.
Outlaws, people literally outside the law, have no legal protections at all. Taken to its limit this means that deportation is not necessary as they could simply be executed where they are found.
This is why being declared an outlaw was such a big fucking deal back when that word wasn’t just a synonym for “criminal”. You could be executed in broad daylight by the first person that found you and there would be no repercussions.
No. “Outlawry” was applied to people who refused to submit to the legal process in the US. If these people aren’t under US jurisdiction, there is no legal process to submit to because they aren’t subject to US law to begin with.
“Outlawry” was applied to people who refused to submit to the legal process in the US.
The concept of an “outlaw” goes at least as far back as ancient Rome and was used in England until something like 1869. It held on in Scotland as part of Civil Law until somewhere in the 1940s. It was also present in France, Germany, and several Nordic countries.
This isn’t just a US thing.
there is no legal process to submit to because they aren’t subject to US law to begin with.
Yes…because they are “Outside the Law”. An Outlaw is neither subject to nor protected by the law.
It’s that last part that so many people in here are missing. If the Elongated Muskrat were declared an “outlaw” you could kick in his front door, drag him out of bed, load him onto a catapult and fire him into the sun and the legal apparatus would not, nay could not, do anything about it.
People need to understand how deeply that “no legal process to submit to” goes. The “outlaw” isn’t subject to the law but neither is anyone else as it relates to them.
The concept as applied in Rome and modern Europe doesn’t really matter in this context because we’re talking about US law. It was used here 150 years ago against bandits in the west but still doesn’t apply to this situation at least according to the definition written by Cornell Law:
Historically, the term “outlaw” was used to refer to a person who was outside of the protection of the law. An accused criminal who refused to submit to legal process was declared to be an outlaw through a process called “outlawry.”
The catch here is “accused criminal” and “refused to submit to legal process.” Both these term first require that you’re subject to the laws in question, which an “old west bandit” would have been. If you remove legal jurisdiction over these people, you can’t then say they’re breaking your laws and refusing to submit to the legal process because you’ve already defined them as being outside of the bounds of your laws and legal process by stating that they’re not under your jurisdiction.
No. According to legal eagle it applies to diplomats living in the US but not living under US jurisdiction.
Oh, and also enemy combatants. Which is probably what Trump will claim immigrants are in his bizzaro world justification…
Oh, and also enemy combatants. Which is probably what Trump will claim immigrants are in his bizzaro world justification…
This is effectively already what Texas has tried to claim…
Yeah - it’s just a matter of time before they’re claiming that immigrants aren’t even human.
