Yeah, But...

This totally doesn't make sense that the 14^th Amendment wasn't ever being considered back then!

The Supreme Court’s Birthright Citizenship Decision Hinges on a Case You’ve Never Heard Of

Slate

By Smita Ghosh

March 18, 2026

On April 1, the Supreme Court hears oral argument in Trump v. Barbara, a class-action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for certain people. No one will be surprised to hear lawyers discussing the text of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause and the history that led to its ratification—that clearly relates to the Trump administration’s claim that birthright citizenship doesn’t apply to children of “undocumented” or “temporarily present” noncitizens because their parents cannot establish “domicile,” meaning permanent presence in the country. But court watchers may not expect to hear debate about an 1844 inheritance case from New York. Yet that case, Lynch v. Clarke, has become incredibly important. Indeed, it may be instrumental in determining the fate of millions of American-born infants.

In the 1844 case, Judge Lewis Sandford held that Julia Lynch, the child of Irish parents who was born during their “temporary sojourn” in New York, was a U.S. citizen. The issue arose amid a heated battle over the fate of Lynch & Clarke, a firm that sold bottled spring water from Saratoga Springs to New York City residents in the early 1800s. Thomas Lynch and John Clarke were partners in the firm until Lynch died in 1833. Lynch had no will, and his only surviving heirs, which included his brother Bernard and a deceased brother’s daughter—his niece Julia—lived in Ireland. A year after Thomas’ death, when Julia was 15, she and her uncle Bernard sailed to New York and geared themselves for a fight for Thomas’ property.

I would like to point out the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1866!

Sandford also rejected Bernard’s argument that Americans had abandoned the English concept of birthright citizenship. He acknowledged that American authorities had rejected some aspects of British law and society. But he concluded that birthright citizenship was by now distinctively American. As Sandford recounted, the Founders understood that their new nation was, in James Madison’s words, “indebted to emigration for her settlement and prosperity.” American authorities therefore embraced the rule of birthright citizenship, referring, for example, to a “natural born citizen” in various statutes and cases.

You know that the current Supreme Court Juices are so called "Originalists" so this goes to show that it was where you were born matters, not your parent's nationality. Kind of shots holes in the Republican's argument.