The Supreme Court’s Birthright Citizenship decision Tuesday morning was the “only conclusion” that it could have come to, argued CNN legal analyst Laura Coates that afternoon.

Host Manu Raju asked Coates to respond to the ruling, which he described as “decisive.”

Coates agreed. The 14th Amendment, she explained, is “particularly decisive.” The amendment specifies that anyone who is born in the United States is automatically granted citizenship in the country and that states cannot “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

“And frankly, this was the only conclusion the supreme court could have reached,” Coates continued. “And, in my opinion, maintained its credibility to uphold the 14th amendment we have known since that 14th amendment, post-reconstruction, let alone the Dred Scott decision, which said had the nerve to say, actually, that the children of freed slaves could not be citizens.”

Coates also ran through a litany of similar cases, including the landmark 1898 United States vs.Wong Kim Ark case, in which the Collectors of Customs attempted to argue “that a man who was born in this country in the United States, whose parents were born in China, was not truly a citizen because his parents had not been.” The case was the first to determine citizenship of children who are born to non-citizen parents.

Opponents of birthright citizenship repeatedly brought up concerns that children of parents who were not born in the United States may not have a strong loyalty to the country, another idea Coates dismissed.

“Now, the issue of allegiance came up very much so in this conversation. The administration suggested that one who was not born in this country to American-born parents would not have the requisite level of allegiance to this country to be considered American enough,” she said. “They had to have some sort of a higher standard. They rejected that, including the idea of jurisdictional concerns around somebody who’s that way. But this was the conclusion that upholds the credibility of the court, who has been questioned time and time again as simply trying to pander to the President of United States. This issue was quite clear.”

Watch above via CNN.

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