Yesterday the Court refused, affirming 5-4 that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is American—and stranding the NH GOP’s so-called moderate to the right of an increasingly extreme Supreme Court.
A week ago, the two leading Republicans running for New Hampshire’s open US Senate seat stood on a debate stage and made clear they wanted birthright citizenship gone—and would move to end it even if the Supreme Court would not.
“No matter what the Supreme Court decides, that is wrong, that shouldn’t be allowed,” former senator John E. Sununu said of birthright citizenship.
“And if the Supreme Court doesn’t make the right decision, then Congress should certainly act to restrict and prohibit that kind of behavior.”
Yesterday, the Court did the opposite.
In a 5-4 ruling, the justices struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order denying citizenship to children born to parents who are undocumented or on temporary visas, reaffirming the 150-year-old understanding that nearly everyone born on US soil is an American citizen.
The decision left both former senators—John E. Sununu and Scott Brown—having staked out a position to the right of the most deeply conservative Supreme Court majority in modern American history.
For Sununu, the front-runner and the candidate who has self-branded as the more moderate of the two, the stance is the more striking.
At the June 24 debate in Hampton, he said that the question was “before the courts” but that the answer should not depend on how they ruled. He pointed to “an industry of people coming from other countries in order to give birth”—a phenomenon often called birth tourism—as evidence the 14th Amendment had been overtaken by events. “That is not what was envisioned by the 14th Amendment,” he said.
Brown, the former Massachusetts senator who narrowly lost to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in 2014, went further in tone. “You have these baby factories that are in Texas and other parts near the border, and they’re just coming over and they’re having a baby,”” he said, adding that he had reviewed the legislative history and concluded the amendment “was never intended” to confer citizenship in such cases. “So I’m hopeful that they make the right decision. If they do not, I will lead the charge as a U.S. senator to make sure that we do not allow that.”
Both men said they hoped the justices would side with the administration and pledged to act in the Senate if they did not. The Court’s conservative supermajority—three of whose members Trump appointed—instead handed the president one of the most consequential defeats of his second term.
The candidates’ bet also runs against the grain of public opinion, including among some of the voters they will need in November.
A Quinnipiac University poll conducted June 18-22 found that 69% of registered voters said the Supreme Court should keep birthright citizenship in place, while just 27% said it should be reversed.
