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A conservative affront to the 14th Amendment gathered steam this week as Republicans assumed office in record numbers throughout the country in statehouses, governorships, and the U.S. House of Representatives. Designating citizenship as a unique responsibility of the federal government, the Citizenship Clause of the14th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” With their new majorities, elected Republicans are seeking to revoke the birthright citizenship of immigrants’ children on two fronts. The first is on the federal level with the appointment of Texas Republican Lamar Smith as chair of the influential House Judiciary Committee. However, the Democrat controlled Senate is expected to reject any anti-14th Amendment legislation that makes it through the House. The second effort is on the state-level, with a 14-state conservative coalition—including South Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania—introducing legislation modeled on Arizona’s SB 1070, which will instigate costly litigation. Additionally, this week Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia restated his opinion on the 14th Amendment, declaring that its equal protection did not extend to women or gays. The crux of Scalia’s argument rested on the Constitution not explicitly stating that there shall be no discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation. He said “Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws.” Regardless of whether Scalia’s comments were coincidental or calculated, Republicans will undoubtedly take the justice’s comments into careful consideration in their efforts to reinterpret the 143-year-old Constitutional amendment.

GUEST: Ali Noorani, President of the National Immigration Forum

Find out more at www.immigrationforum.org.