Jackson criticized her fellow justice’s “ahistorical” interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

Echoing the Trump administration’s sentiments, Thomas argued in his dissent that the 14th Amendment “was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”

Thomas also argued that the Civil Rights Act, which became the foundation for the 14th Amendment, had ensured citizenship to people born in the U.S. and “not subject to any foreign power.”

“The Citizenship Clause [of the 14th Amendment], which the same Congress passed shortly after the Civil Rights Act, was understood to have the same meaning,” Thomas wrote. “It guaranteed citizenship to persons who were both ‘born . . . in the United States’ and ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”

Jackson called this “ahistorical,” denying that the “text at issue conferred citizenship only on freed Blacks and those in analogous situations.”

Jackson also blamed the Trump administration and Thomas for repurposing the amendment, adding that the Civil Rights Act initially only included Black people but was later expanded to include people of all ethnic backgrounds.

  • QuantumSpecter@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    Justice Thomas is evil he had his newphew falsely imprisoned at hidden lake academy one of troubled teen programs and this one of old school programs based on synanon methods. bbc link

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      27 days ago

      Justice Thomas is evil he had his newphew falsely imprisoned at hidden lake academy one of troubled teen programs and this one of old school programs based on synanon methods.

      Is that one long sentence, or is that a few sentences with no pause in-between?

    • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      Bro. I’m fucking DYING at this. Gonna rewatch the MLK episode of Boondocks and shit my pants laughing at uncle SCOTUS.

    • P1k1e@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      The funny thing is, given the aims he’s working towards, that’s basically where it’s all going anyway

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldM
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    26 days ago

    I didn’t realize that there was no constitutional right to birthright citizenship before the Civil War. TIL

    Apparently, every state had its own laws and standards about who was a citizen, although there were a few congressional acts that established a basic framework.

    It seems wild to me that we started a whole country and we didn’t even figure out who was a member of it.

    • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      American law continues to be built on “oh we forgot to make that a law” and “oh we didn’t think that would matter”.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        26 days ago

        Hey now sometimes you need to filter for the right immigrants, like can you imagine the absolute chaos that a Brandenburger could cause.

        I don’t know the point of this joke, just kinda felt like bashing the Prussians.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      26 days ago

      Well it used to be much harder to have identifying documents. So if you were in the country, you were part of the country.

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      Keep in mind that the US was originally structured more like the EU. We spent about a century slowly shifting from a collection of nation states in an alliance to one big nation state.

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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      26 days ago

      For now. We’ve established that SC Justices are allowed to make decisions totally disregarding the text of the constitution. It’s only a matter of time before Mississippi decides to send catholics to prison, and some future SC decides that that’s fine because the founding fathers would have wanted everyone to be evangelical.