Clarence Thomas' 'astonishing' birthright citizenship dissent leaves MS NOW aghast

Justice Clarence Thomas's eyebrow-raising birthright citizenship dissent on Tuesday became the topic of discussion on MS NOW, with one anchor describing it as "astonishing" and legal analyst Lisa Rubin calling it "disappointing."

"Astonishing may be the wrong word; I think disappointing maybe another word," Rubin said, telling viewers the dissent was "certainly predictable, based on oral argument."

The exchange came moments after the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara, a 6-3 ruling that struck down President Donald Trump's executive order. The anchor had turned to Rubin to unpack Thomas's "astonishing" reasoning. Rubin's answer reframed the dissent as a letdown, but unsurprising.

What disappointed her was the line Thomas drew, and where it came from. Rubin said Thomas was "picking up a thread that Solicitor General John Sauer left for him," and later that he was "taking the bait" — drawing a distinction between Black Americans and the children of what he called "foreign temporary visitors." In his dissent, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, Thomas argued the 14th Amendment was written to confer citizenship on the children of slaves, not on temporary visitors' children, reaching back to the Dred Scott decision and quoting Frederick Douglass to build it.

She predicted it would not land with the people it claims to honor.

"This is a distinction that large swaths of the civil rights movement will not accept," Rubin said, pointing to decades of shared organizing between the NAACP and immigrant rights groups.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by the court's three liberal justices and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, holding that children born in the United States to parents here unlawfully or temporarily are citizens at birth. Justices Thomas, Samuel Alito and Gorsuch dissented.

The decision ends a fight that immigration scholars had long argued rested on a shaky reading of 14th Amendment history.