Last week, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited birthright citizenship decision. In the ruling, the court ruled to strike down President Trump’s executive order, saying it violated the 14^th Amendment.

Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) and former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, joined The Drew Mariani Show to discuss the ruling.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the case. He argued that President Trump’s executive order, which would exclude children of illegal immigrants from citizenship, violates the 14th Amendment, which reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” Roberts, in his ruling, wrote, “Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.”

Severino was disappointed with the ruling, and wished the decision was decided on more narrow grounds, but she told Drew that the history of an expansive definition of birthright citizenship made it hard for the justices to interpret the 14th Amendment in a more restrictive way.

“There were six justices who voted against Trump in this, but Justice Kavanaugh had a kind of different position than the other five,” she said. Kavanaugh argued that “the Executive Order does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.” Rather, Trump’s Executive Order violated a federal statute. Should the Court have ruled that way, “then at least Congress could have gone back and said, ‘Well, amend that statute,’” Severino said.

Rick Garnett, law professor at The University of Notre Dame, explained that much of the criticism of the decision came from the right. “People who are really angry with the majority and strongly in support of the dissent, they tend to neglect the fact that even the dissenting justices agreed…that the Constitution would require citizenship for quite a few people who were born from people who were present unlawfully,” he said.

Earlier this year, the USCCB filed an amicus brief in support of birthright citizenship. The brief said that “birthright citizenship reflects the Catholic principle of subsidiarity by recognizing persons as members of the community from birth, thereby enabling their participation in civic life and ensuring that state power serves the human person as a social being.”