Transcription
Tomorrow, or very shortly after, the United States Supreme Court is going to make history. You are living through a moment of history. If no one has told you that, then let me be the first person to tell you.
The United States Supreme Court is set to rule on a landmark Supreme Court case that is going to decide what it means to be a United States citizen, specifically to whom you are born. This stems from an executive order that sought to end the concept of birthright citizenship, specifically for children who were born to parents who were not here lawfully, or whose parents were here on certain types of short-term visas.
No matter what anyone tells you, this is a historic moment. And no matter what anyone tells you, people who tell you they know what the Supreme Court is going to say, well, many of those people have been wrong before. But I want to tell you that, regardless of this moment of history and what happens tomorrow or shortly after, that we have been here before. The Supreme Court has made decisions that have been, in the view of history, incorrect.
In 1857, Dred Scott, the United States Supreme Court rules in a 7-2 ruling that black Americans could not be citizens. This decision led to an enormous turmoil, eventually one of the factors that led to the American Civil War. Dred Scott was eventually overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendment, but the court was wrong, or at least history decided that the court was wrong.
1896, the Supreme Court, Plessy v. Ferguson, they ruled separate but equal was the law of the land and allowed for segregation. This stood for 58 years before Brown versus the Board of Education. The one man who dissented, by the way, said, and I quote, "Our Constitution is colorblind." And he was completely alone. One man against eight.
In 1918, the court struck down a law banning child labor. In 1940, courts said that schools could force students to salute the flag against their religion. Three years later, just three years later, they overturned their own decision.
And much closer to our timeline now, 1944, Korematsu, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision, upholds an executive order, the result of which was 110,000 Japanese-Americans sent into internment camps. More than two-thirds of those were American-born citizens. And the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, said yes. That case was actually not formally overturned until 2018.
I do not know what the Supreme Court is going to do with birthright citizenship, but I do know one thing. The people on that bench and in that building have issued rulings that history and people and amendments have later decided was wrong. So, if you're feeling discouraged, know that history does indeed have a long arc, and it is up to us to make sure that the morality of the moment, well, is a movement.