MSNBC Legal Expert Says Trump ‘Might Be Proved Right’ by Supreme Court on Birthright Citizenship
Former US Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said Thursday that the Supreme Court could side with President Donald Trump in a case challenging birthright citizenship.
Rosenberg appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe just hours before the court was scheduled to hear oral arguments on the matter.
He discussed the constitutional foundations of birthright citizenship, which Trump and his legal team have argued should not apply to the children of undocumented immigrants or foreign nationals temporarily in the country.
During the segment, MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire noted that Trump, who was currently in the Middle East, had questioned the historical and legal basis of birthright citizenship on social media.
Trump criticized what he categorized as vacation citizenship and argued that the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to grant automatic citizenship to anyone born on US soil.
Lemire called Trump’s take on birthright citizenship a “dubious history lesson” and said, “But he’s certainly believing that this is something that does need to be overturned, Chuck.”
Rosenberg referenced United States v. Wong Kim Ark, a 1898 Supreme Court ruling that affirmed birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.
“This gentleman was the child of a permanent resident, people of Chinese descent,” Rosenberg said. “And the Supreme Court said, based on the reading of the Fourteenth Amendment passed just 30 years earlier, in 1868, he was subject to the jurisdiction of the United States by being born in this country to those parents.”
Rosenberg added of the outcome of the Ark case, “That’s been our understanding ever since.”
The legal expert concluded he did see a scenario in which the court agreed with Trump but he did not offer a specific example as to why.
“Could it change? It could change,” Rosenberg said. “Might President Trump be proved right? He might be proved right. But it is absolutely distinctly the minority view.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
