By Michael Woyton
We don’t have to imagine a country where a woman in one state can receive safe, effective and legal reproductive health care but if she travels a couple of states away she may not be able to receive the same care.
The United States Supreme Court made that decision in 2022 and we are living in that country now.
Today, the Supreme Court seems to have cleared the way for that same woman — if she happens to have been born in the U.S. to parents who are not citizens — to find herself an American citizen in some states but not in others.
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The court ruled 6-3 that the felon-in-chief’s executive order declaring that the children of parents who enter the U.S. illegally or on a temporary visa are not entitled to automatic citizenship could not be stayed nationwide by a single court’s ruling.
The court did not rule on the constitutionality of the order itself.
According to U.S. Attorney General Bondi, until SCOTUS makes a ruling on birthright citizenship, supposedly in October, she said, if someone, say, in Oregon gets a lower court ruling in his or her favor will it only apply in that one case. Anybody else wanting to make the same argument will have to do so in an entirely different case. No such thing as precedence.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent said that the court’s decision “is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution.”
She explained that the executive branch “can now enforce policies that flout settled law and violate countless individuals’ constitutional rights, and the federal courts will be hamstrung to stop its actions fully.”
How could those unlawful actions be stopped? Sotomayor said that every person affected by the president’s actions would have to become party to a lawsuit in order to get relief. Fat chance.
Sotomayor wraps up her dissent by saying, “The rule of law is not a given in this Nation. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival.”
She said the president, with a stroke of a pen, has made a “solemn mockery” of the Constitution.
The court, Sotomayor said, has chosen not to stand firm, but to give way — once again — to the president.
Obviously, this administration wants to usher in white supremacy — to begin with. After that takes hold, what is to prevent President Stephen Miller Felon from issuing a new executive order that declares all registered Democrats are no longer American citizens?
Once SCOTUS decides that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are not necessarily “citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” all bets are off.
My mind is reeling just thinking of the myriad subclasses of citizens at whom the hatred of this president and his sycophants could targeted.
Do we really want this white supremacist president, this Christian Nationalist Congress and this corrupt Supreme Court to hand pick who can and cannot be American citizens?
We are — literally — in the next midterm elections voting for the existence of this country.
Do we as voters choose to stand firm or give way?
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