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by tacticalturtle 435 days ago
Kind of nuts that there are different rules for out-of-wedlock US citizen father vs out-of-wedlock US citizen mother.

Doesn’t that violate the 14th amendment? Equal protection and all that?

3 comments

> Kind of nuts that there are different rules for out-of-wedlock US citizen father vs out-of-wedlock US citizen mother.

Why? I think that's the historical standard. True maternity has always been easy to establish, but paternity had to rely on legal institutions and custom.

Indeed you couldn't really prove who the dad was in the past. I guess now with DNA you could.
Probably. But until someone challenges it in the Supreme Court, it stands.
According to the authors of the 14th amendment, the citizenship clause was meant to be retroactive, to right the wrongs of slavery, not a forward motion statute for the world.

Supreme Court to Debate Birthright Citizenship Case.

Are you stating that is true, or that that’s the argument the Trump administration is making right now?

Because the notion that the 14 amendment was supposed to be retroactive only is definitely not captured in some of those quotes here by the senators who debated it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_Clause