The Supreme Court on Friday handed President Donald Trump a victory in his effort to unilaterally eliminate birthright citizenship in the country, an undertaking that would seemingly be plainly at odds with the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.Instead of opining on Trump’s executive order or the 14th Amendment itself, however, the 6-3 ruling sets the stage for a potential patchwork of state-level enforcement, depending on which courts in which states grant relief to which parties.All three of the court’s liberal justices dissented, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson penning separate (but concurring) scathing rebukes of the majority opinion.Sotomayor, writing first, accused the government of engaging in “gamesmanship” that threatens the foundational rule of law.The 14th Amendment plainly extends citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” she noted. “That means what it says.”In failing to uphold that plain Constitutional pillar, she warned, “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates.”“Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”She closed by accusing the court of complicity in mocking the U.S. Constitution.“The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other,” wrote Sotomayor. “It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort.”Writing separately, Jackson went even further, ominously saying the ruling itself “threatens the rule of law” by emboldening the executive branch at the expense of all others.“I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the Executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the Court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, and from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends,” Jackson warned.“Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.”Jackson joined Sotomayor in accusing the court of meek complicity in the face of an attack on the rule of law, hastening its own demise.“Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway. But this Court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall,” she wrote.Close