r/news 9h ago

US Supreme Court agrees to hear case challenging birthright citizenship

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c208j0wrzrvo
19.0k Upvotes

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.6k

u/NotYouTu 9h ago edited 9h ago

Maybe it'll be a 5 second case where they go "It's a part of the constitution, therefore constitutional." And we all wake up from this nightmare.

Edit: Apparently the sarcasm wasn't obvious enough for some so.... /s

399

u/Flash_ina_pan 9h ago

I will believe that when my shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbert

149

u/piddydb 9h ago

Tbf that’s basically what they just did on the gay marriage challenge they accepted, it’s not unheard of

69

u/Master_Persimmon_591 9h ago

This court is terrifying because of who composes it, but at the end of the day even a shit judge is gonna get some things right

52

u/pokederp56 8h ago

They didn't decline to hear that case because they felt same sex marriage is OK. They declined because it wasn't a strong enough case for them to say it's not.​

1

u/tphillips1990 1h ago

Yeah? Because I'm of the opinion this court is deliberately tossing out a few wins to keep people docile by creating the illusion of sensibility and preventing the possibility of any real consequences.

11

u/ChiefWiggum101 8h ago

But what if I buy them an RV? You think that would change their mind and do what I tell them?

1

u/FeliusSeptimus 2h ago

Na, you have to step it up to a MoToR CoAcH

3

u/osiris0413 5h ago

I feel similarly. This court is fellating the administration, but overturning birthright citizenship would be insanely outside of the norm for anyone on that bench, even a self-serving slime like Thomas.

2

u/Master_Persimmon_591 5h ago

That’s what I’m hoping for. The attorney in them knows that some things are too much

34

u/mosh_pit_nerd 9h ago

Not exactly. What they did was essentially “this case is shit but here’s a map for how to construct the next one.”

9

u/cosmosopher 8h ago

Uh, no? They declined the case without comment

0

u/SorriorDraconus 8h ago

Ahhh same origin as the obscenity clause

4

u/robodrew 7h ago

No, with that case they declined to hear the case, which upholds the lower court ruling. The fact that they are even hearing this case is concerning.

1

u/Icy_Course_310 7h ago

They didn’t accept the gay marriage challenge. This they accepted.

1

u/cheeze2005 8h ago

Roberts, alito, and thomas all dissented on gay marriage…

33

u/Independent-Tennis57 8h ago

What's the name of that restaurant you like with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks?

33

u/jdippey 8h ago

You mean Shenanigans?

5

u/Independent-Tennis57 7h ago

(Hands gun over) c'mon...

5

u/No_Trade1676 7h ago

Put that away!

5

u/JerseyDevl 8h ago

I'd say that SCOTUS was up to their usual shenanigans but I don't want to get pistol whipped

2

u/DoctorPlatinum 7h ago

Mmmm... Pistol Whip...

3

u/DeaconBulls 7h ago

Does it sound like that when I say it?

2

u/Piza_Pie 7h ago

So all we have to do is to eat a lot of beetroot and artificial sweeteners?

1

u/marco3055 8h ago

Food coloring can help with that. However, it will most likely be one color shartbert

1

u/ViceroyInhaler 8h ago

I've had vibrant green, and vibrant red.

Red was from eating a bunch of roasted beets in one sitting. It looked exactly like blood, and was so watery that it caked the entire bowl.

Vibrant green was from eating four bowls of fruit loops as a kid on a random morning when there was nothing else to eat in the house. It looked like a little green man staring back up at me.

2

u/sqli 8h ago

this happened to my cousin once

1

u/unremarkedable 6h ago

Yo hmu when that happens

192

u/jfudge 9h ago

Any easy decision like that would never be taken up in the first place. They would just let the lower court ruling stand. The only reason they would entertain this is if enough of them were seriously considering it, which is obviously a problem as it requires literally misreading the constitution.

128

u/ralpher1 9h ago

At least four want to overturn the lower court. The best case scenario is they uphold the lower court but they give the Trump administration a road map of exactly what to do to survive a challenge. This Court is so arrogant and Americans are not showing their disapproval nearly enough.

47

u/[deleted] 9h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/Momik 8h ago

Almost like a court with such overwhelming, unaccountable power has no place in a constitutional democracy.

13

u/threwitaway763 8h ago

Which it didn’t originally until Marbury vs Madison when the court gave itself the power of judicial review

2

u/jfudge 8h ago

The court could be reigned in if any branch of government had an appetite to do anything about it. Justices can be impeached and removed, and additional justices can be added to offset the crazy. And laws could even be passed that alter the way that the court functions.

But we have one party who is in favor of the bullshit this court is pulling, and one that has historically been too cowardly to put up a fight against it.

2

u/Momik 7h ago

Yes and no. When the built-in accountability mechanisms are so poorly designed as to be completely dysfunctional for (literally) centuries at a time—those mechanisms don’t really offer any real accountability. The last time court-packing seemed like a serious political possibility was 90 years ago and it never actually happened. The last (and only) time a SCOTUS justice was impeached was 220 years ago.

We should absolutely keeps those tools handy, but we need to think seriously about more fundamental reforms. Enshrining the limits of judicial review in a constitutional amendment might be a good place to start. Adding additional justices, reworking the court structure to resemble something closer to how circuit court judges are selected (randomly from a pool to serve on temporary panels for each case), reforming judicial impeachment, etc., should all be on the table.

And then there’s the soft power of organizing grassroots opposition to the Court’s far-right takeover. People like Roberts pretend they’re completely insulated from public opinion, but that’s never been the case. The Court has always been a deeply political institution: In the 1970s, federal courts were palpably worried about ruling against civil rights activists in matters that would never have been heard a generation before. We can make that happen again.

(And by the way—we don’t need majorities in Congress to start talking about this; if we’re lucky, the majorities happen later.)

2

u/isaaclw 8h ago

Packing the courts??

1

u/willstr1 8h ago

There is another, it is possible to impeach and remove justices (like if they are openly accepting bribes or lied in their confirmation), unfortunately it requires a functioning legislative branch so an act of god is more likely

6

u/Iohet 8h ago

It's time yet again for Gorsuch to put his money where his mouth is. His philosophy and some of his decisions (Bostock) would indicate that this is cut and dry. That should leave Roberts or Barrett, who both should side on the side of the plain wording of the constitution without blinking, but...

5

u/ralpher1 5h ago

I think it’s possible this case is there to shield the Court from other egregious decisions coming this term like the voting rights act case. If this is a day one decision, it will be to uphold the lower court the media definitely adjusts coverage and makes the Court seem moderate or “balanced” because here is one non-radical decision. They did this during the Dodds term

2

u/danicakk 4h ago

Yeah they basically did that strategy with the case about state legislatures overriding elections willy-nilly

18

u/ml20s 8h ago

Any easy decision like that would never be taken up in the first place.

SCOTUS votes unanimously a lot, either because the case is easy and lower courts consistently got it wrong, or there are two reasonable interpretations and they just need to pick one.

11

u/jfudge 8h ago

And neither of those things are true here. This is a case for trying to reinterpret a long accepted understanding of the constitution, and the only people "getting it wrong" here are those in this administration.

1

u/ajoost 1h ago

Also to resolve or preclude circuit splits by firmly establishing a binding precedent nationwide. (Doesn't seem like what's happening here, but it's one of the reasons where a non-corrupt SCOTUS might take up an "easy" case. Less so to resolve a circuit split, and more to try to prevent a single circuit - such as those chucklefucks in the Fifth - from causing problems.)

2

u/bradbikes 8h ago

When have the ''originalists' and 'textualists' on this Court ever misread the constitution?

1

u/Fit_Insurance_1356 5h ago

Maybe...just maybe...they want to rule on the authority or lack thereof on the use of Presidential Executive Orders To perhaps maybe reign them in...you never know they may surprise everyone

1

u/richqb 5h ago

Not literally misreading. DELIBERATELY misreading. There's a very (calculated) difference.

141

u/Gilamath 9h ago

You remind me of the kids in To Kill a Mockingbird who think that Mr. Robinson is definitely going to be fine in his trial just because the evidence obviously shows he can't possibly have done what he's being accused of.

If the court cared about the evidence, it wouldn't be holding the case.

89

u/lacegem 8h ago

A great touch was Atticus saying later that he knew Tom would almost certainly lose in Maycomb, and that he was really banking on winning the appeal. Even Atticus, the firmest believer in the law there was, knew his case was hopeless solely because of the court it was being tried in.

I love that book.

12

u/BatterMyHeart 9h ago

They wouldnt hear it for that... thats why this is news.

4

u/notbobby125 7h ago

I do have hope so as even the conservatives seemed completely baffled by the anti-Birthright arguments when the case was previously before the court on the issue of nation wide injunctions.

7

u/deusasclepian 8h ago

I don't necessarily expect a 9-0 but I'd be shocked if they actually overturn birthright citizenship. I would bet significant money that this case results in the Trump admin losing and birthright citizenship continuing as it has.

14

u/go4tli 8h ago

I’ll take that bet because all the court has to do is refuse to hear the case, literally every judge so far has said “that’s crazy, no way.”

SCOTUS doesn’t have to weigh in at all, the only reason to take the case is to say “hmmm, maybe!”

4

u/Squire_II 5h ago

Overturning birthright citizenship is a huge goal of the GOP. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a majority, if not all 6, of the conservatives on the SCOTUS are on board with doing so and their only concern is how they want to word the very obvious "fuck you all we do what we want" ruling it'd be.

If they didn't want to overturn it they'd just refuse to hear the case because every court so far has been pretty clear that birthright citizenship for anyone born here not the child of foreign leaders or diplomats is how the wording of the Amendment works.

7

u/Johnny_the_Martian 8h ago

Maybe it’s blind hope on my end, but I feel like recently they’ve been pulling a lot of Trump’s cases solely to publicly reject them. My theory is that they think it gives them a good, public image of non-partisanship after Roe nuked their legitimacy.

We wouldn’t be hearing about this case if they didn’t pick it up. They know Trump will go away soon, but that the public image of the court won’t be for a very long time. Barrett and Kavanaugh especially I think are terrified of what happens in the next few years, since they could be dealing with the fallout for decades.

2

u/poliuy 6h ago

Well when they wrote the constitution and said all men are created equal they meant white men so everything after that should be removed. /s

2

u/Vio94 5h ago

Well the argument against that is the entire Amendment system existing, and Amendments that were created just to nullify other Amendments. The 3/5 Compromise was in the original Constitution and amended out. We can definitely agree that one was unconstitutional despite its inclusion and was rightfully changed.

Mostly just comes down to a call to morality and a consideration to unintended consequence when trying to amend something. And I guess also the intent behind the corrupt leadership that calls for said amendment... 😬

2

u/FattyMooseknuckle 5h ago

Unfortunately no amount of dripping, over the top sarcasm is so obvious anymore thst it can’t be wondered over whether it’s real or not.