EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Eric Schmitt Lays Out How Congress Can Fix Supreme Court’s ‘Ridiculous Interpretation’ Of Constitution

Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt unveiled his plan to fix the country’s broken laws governing immigration — both legal and illegal — as well as the one issue on which both parties appear to agree.

Schmitt called the Supreme Court’s June decision that President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order was unconstitutional a “ridiculous interpretation” of the Constitution in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF). The GOP lawmaker discussed why he has been especially active on the issue in recent weeks and laid out what his fellow legislators can do to ensure the Constitution is interpreted as its framers intended.

The 6-3 Trump v. Barbara decision “misinterpreted the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act [of 1866] that followed after the Civil War, which were meant to make sure that the children of former slaves were indeed full-fledged citizens,” the senator told the DCNF.

“That was the right thing to do,” he added, emphasizing that this was the “purpose” of establishing birthright citizenship in the country. “It certainly didn’t mean, nor was it contemplated, that you could come here from China, give birth, leave a week later, and then have a child raised in the CCP [Chinese Communist Party], come back on their 18th birthday, and run for office or contribute to political campaigns and be a citizen just like somebody who spent their whole life here.”

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Schmitt has proposed a constitutional amendment to address this practice, widely described as “birth tourism.” The senator’s proposed amendment, “among other things, would restore the scope of birthright citizenship to only the children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents,” according to a June 30 press release from his office, the day the Barbara ruling was handed down. (RELATED: Congress Plans To ‘Rein In’ Birth Tourism Scams After SCOTUS Ruling)

Two weeks after the Court’s decision, Schmitt introduced the American Citizenship Act, which also seeks to accomplish this same goal.

The senator also pointed out Justice Brett Kavanaugh laid out a “statutory fix” to the problem in his concurring opinion in the Barbara case. The justice argued Trump’s executive order, while violating the Immigration and Nationality Act, did not run afoul of the 14th Amendment.

“A statutory fix that Justice Kavanaugh kind of laid out — which is to make clear that the language should be not subject to a foreign power — it’s just kind of a technical issue, but it’s what the authors of the 14th Amendment meant,” Schmitt told the DCNF. “I think the Supreme Court got it wrong so we’re working on that.”