Citizenship at birth, free speech for all

“Blood and soil” – the ideology which guides the ethos of most nation-states; the concept that one’s ethnicity creates a singular connection to one’s nationality.

No other belief of man has spilled more blood on more soil than this racially exclusive idea. And it’s absurd. Go back 150,000 years or more, and no one is from anywhere but the Rift Valley of Africa. Every human being, on every other continent, arrived as an immigrant – far enough back.

The truly most revolutionary notion of the United States of America came from our Constitution’s 14th Amendment, anyone born in the United States enjoys full citizenship. Following a brutal Civil War, this nation stood up for the simple concept that anyone birthed on these shores carried as much right to enjoy the privileges and responsibilities as those families long-resident. A baby born to Guatemalan parents at Charity Hospital has enjoyed the same equal rights as a child descended from Bienville’s original explorers or those whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.

Equal protection under the law became our birthright, and over time, those fundamental rights extended to any person legally residing in the United States. Now, the Trump administration seeks to reinterpret the Constitution to mean only the children of freed slaves received citizenship under the 14th Amendment, when countless U.S. Supreme Court cases have explained the language to include all babies, just as the Constitution reads.

Perhaps, just as frightening, the president desires to deport legal residents who utter political speech of which he disagrees.

The First Amendment is not a multiple choice clause in the document. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes defined free speech as “speech you hate” and the right to citizenship “beginning at birth” in all cases. These decisions have guard-posted our liberties for more than a century.

In recent weeks, Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett have broken with their conservative colleagues, arguing that if something is written in the law or the Constitution, it does not matter what some of the founders of the Republic might have debated. What matters is what has been written down, and both of these rights of birthright citizenship and free speech read clear as day in the U.S. Constitution. In lieu of their most recent rulings, justice should prevail to thwart this attack on the actual words of the sacred document.

This article originally published in the March 17, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.