Fox News Legal Editor Says Supreme Court Is ‘Leaning Against’ Trump on Landmark Birthright Citizenship Case

Fox News legal editor and former Trump administration official Kerri Urbahn said it sounded like the Supreme Court is “leaning against” President Donald Trump in its landmark case examining birthright citizenship.

Urbahn shared her analysis during an appearance on Outnumbered on Wednesday, after the Supreme Court had listened to a few hours worth of arguments in the case.

“I’m not sure where the Supreme Court justices will land — it feels like they are leaning against the administration,” Urbahn said. “But I will say this, they were taken arguments very seriously and asking tough questions to both sides.”

She had said a moment before that the issue was a “closer call than all the people who were decrying this as ‘crazy'” believed.

Her appearance comes after Trump has called birthright citizenship one of the “great scams” in American history. The president has argued the 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to grant citizenship to former slaves, but is now being exploited by rich foreigners who travel to the U.S. to give birth.

Fox News host and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany referenced those concerns in her discussion with Urbahn, noting somewhere between 1 million and 1.5 million Chinese nationals have traveled to the U.S. and given birth to kids who automatically become citizens. McEnany said Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court that was not what the 14th Amendment “intended” in 1868 when it was passed.

Urbahn said that was not what the 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark case — which confirmed birthright citizenship — intended, either.

“[It was] different context and certainly not the exploitation of our citizenship clause that we are seeing today, where people are just crossing the board in order to have babies or entire companies being devoted to bringing people over, pregnant women, holing them up in houses in Beverly hills to have a baby, just to fly back to their country,” she said.

Urbahn added the case could hinge on the interpretation of the “wonky” phrase in the 14th Amendment that people born in the U.S. and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. Trump took issue with how that phrase has been interpreted in his executive order limiting birthright citizenship last year, arguing it means kids born to foreign parents should not become citizens automatically. That executive order spurred the case the Supreme Court is now reviewing.

And while Urbahn believes it’ll be a close call, over on CNN, legal analyst Shan Wu argued those who question the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment are pushing a “racist viewpoint.”

Watch above via Fox News.

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