Equal Protection Under Attack

Just to prove how intent Senate Republicans are in turning the United States into a backwater of patchwork state laws, they’ve picked their new enemy, the 14th Amendment.

Under the guise of an attack on illegal immigration, Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Lindsey “Huckleberry Hound” Graham (R-SC) have hatched a plan to go after the 14th.

The 14th Amendment, in addition to other things, guarantees citizenship to individuals born in the United States. From the Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

By repealing the 14th Amendment, Kyl and Graham think they can deal with the problem of illegal immigrants having children here to stay in the country.

But this is a double edged sword on several counts.

First of all, does anyone remember, way back in the days of the Cold War, people coming to the United States to have children here to escape the totalitarian regimes that were in place? Yeah, back then the 14th Amendment was seen as a vehicle to defeat Communism. Now, not so much.

Then there are other problems. The “Equal Protection Clause” is the foundation upon which most of the landmark decisions of our time has been founded, and surprise, it’s in the 14th Amendment!

Brown V. Board of Education is one of them, but so is the recent ruling in the McDonald v. City of Chicago which relied on the “Due Process Clause” of the 14th.

One other case of note is Roe V. Wade.

In short, by repealing the 14th amendment, the Republicans hope to kill a bunch of birds with one stone, even if they happen to like the recent ruling against Chicago and others.

The repeal would change decades of precedent in Constitutional law that would have to be retried with likely disastrous consequences.

Tags: 14th Amendment, illegal immigration, Jon Kyl