NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has joined Iowa and 23 other states in filing a brief with the Supreme Court of the United States, urging the Court to reconsider how the Constitution defines birthright citizenship.

In a 30-page amicus brief, the coalition argues that the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause — which states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" are citizens — has been interpreted too broadly.

The states contend that automatic citizenship should apply only to children whose parents are lawfully present and owe allegiance to the United States.

"The idea that citizenship is guaranteed to everyone born in the United States doesn't square with the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment or the way many government officials and legal analysts understood the law when it was adopted after the Civil War," Skrmetti said in a statement.

The filing draws on historical sources from the Reconstruction era through the early 1900s, suggesting that lawmakers at the time tied citizenship to parental domicile and legal status. It also challenges the long-standing interpretation of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 Supreme Court decision involving a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents residing in the U.S. That ruling has served as the foundation for modern birthright citizenship.

"I have not seen a case of that before Wong Kim Ark or after in which a person had been denied citizenship based on the fact that their parents did not have a legal presence or as Skrmetti or others are arguing that they were not intending to be permanent residence and therefore lacked allegiance to the United States," Jim Holton, a lecturer at Middle Tennessee State University, said.

Tennessee is joined by states including Florida, Georgia, Texas and Missouri, to name some. They argue the Supreme Court should clarify who qualifies for automatic citizenship under the Constitution.

"The Supreme Court in deciding that case very firmly stated that his own parentage did not matter that all that mattered was that Wong Kim Ark was born in the United States, and he owed his allegiance to the United States from the very beginning," Holton said. "I think it's very remarkable because at that point, Chinese immigrants were not allowed to become citizens, all Asian immigrants were not allowed to become citizens."

It's unclear how this would play out if overturned. Some questions have arisen about whether the government would have to verify parental status for every birth or potentially create a class of people born in the U.S. without any citizenship anywhere.

"That is a fear that somebody could be stateless or a second-class citizen, which this country has traditionally, something which this country never had to encounter," said Bill Gerstein, an immigration attorney at Gerstein & Gerstein.

Skrmetti is expected to discuss Tennessee's role in the filing in the coming days.

News Source : https://www.wkrn.com/news/tennessee-news/tennessee-joins-24-states-in-supreme-court-brief-on-birthright-citizenship/