Chief Justice John Roberts, who is usually fairly quiet during oral arguments, asked a skeptical question of the Trump administration.
The chief justice expressed skepticism over the Trump administration’s arguments about what the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means in the 14th Amendment.
“You obviously put a lot of weight on ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ But the examples you give to support that strike me as very quirky,” he said.
“You know, children, of ambassadors, children of enemies during a hostile invasion, children on warships. And then you expand it to the whole class of illegal aliens who are here in the country,” he said. “I’m not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples.”
