There was our guiding light: The 14th Amendment, passed 100 years earlier. It extended citizenship to all persons born on American soil — a direct repudiation of the racist Dred Scott opinion, which once declared that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

The case in question, involving lawsuits by two states and an organization, stems from President Donald Trump’s blatantly unconstitutional Executive Order 14160 declaring as a matter of policy that birthright citizenship doesn’t apply to certain people born in the United States.