The Supreme Court’s spring-term decisions have been released in a steady stream in recent days, and it’s been mostly bad news for campaign-finance reformers and transgender folks. Although I have to say, the case about transgender athletes was not a huge surprise, and the decision mostly sounds like a placeholder/status-quo situation. Then, on Tuesday, SCOTUS released their decision on Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 14th Amendment, also known as birthright citizenship. Trump ran on ending birthright citizenship in 2024, and once in office, he tried to selectively limit birthright citizenship via an executive order. SCOTUS said “nope.”
The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down President Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship, reaffirming the long-held principle that the Constitution guarantees that nearly all children born on U.S. soil are citizens.
The ruling was a significant blow to a policy long pursued by Mr. Trump to prevent babies born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents from automatically becoming Americans.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, explained that Mr. Trump’s executive order violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Children born in the United States to undocumented parents or to parents temporarily in the country, he wrote, are citizens at birth.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “The framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’”
He added: “We keep that promise today.”
The legal battle over birthright citizenship began on the first day of Mr. Trump’s second term, when he announced an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” In the order, he declared that citizenship would not longer be automatically granted to babies born on U.S. soil. In particular, children born to immigrants who entered the country illegally would no longer be citizens, nor would those born to parents here on a lawful but temporary basis, such as those on student, work or tourist visas.
The president’s order faced immediate legal challenges, as civil rights organizations, immigrant advocacy groups and expectant parents sued, successfully winning in court to block the order while lawsuits unfolded.
It never went into effect, and there were few signs the administration had been preparing the dramatic overhaul of the citizenship system that would have been necessary were it allowed.
That last part is, I suspect, rather crucial to SCOTUS’s decision. It’s not that the far-right Supreme Court is suddenly full of justices fiercely protective of the 14th Amendment. It’s that Trump’s EO was half-assed at best, and he literally had no plan for how, when and where birthright citizenship was applied. Trump thought he could just wave a magic wand and delegitimize the citizenship of every child born to immigrant parents, and that would be that. I’m trying very hard not to think about what the Roberts court would have done if Trump actually had a real plan to remove citizenship en masse from millions of first-generation Americans.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- Members of the Supreme Court pose for a group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington. Seated from left: Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Justice Stephen G. Breyer, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Featuring: John G. Roberts Jr. Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 23 Apr 2021 Credit: Erin Schaff/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages/Cover Images
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- Justices of the United States Supreme Court during a formal group photograph at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. The court opened its new term Monday with a calendar already full of high-profile clashes, including two cases that could end the use of race in college admissions. Featuring: Amy Coney Barrett, Brett M Kavanaugh, Samuel Anthony Alito Jr, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, Clarence Thomas, John Glover Roberts Jr, Neil McGill Gorsuch, Sonia M Sotomayor Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 07 Oct 2022 Credit: Eric Lee/POOL/CNP/startraksphoto.com/Cover Images
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- Justices of the United States Supreme Court during a formal group photograph at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. The court opened its new term Monday with a calendar already full of high-profile clashes, including two cases that could end the use of race in college admissions. Featuring: Clarence Thomas Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 07 Oct 2022 Credit: Eric Lee/POOL/CNP/startraksphoto.com/Cover Images
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- Justices of the United States Supreme Court during a formal group photograph at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. The court opened its new term Monday with a calendar already full of high-profile clashes, including two cases that could end the use of race in college admissions. Featuring: Amy Coney Barrett, Brett M Kavanaugh, Samuel Anthony Alito Jr, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, Clarence Thomas, John Glover Roberts Jr, Neil McGill Gorsuch, Sonia M Sotomayor Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 07 Oct 2022 Credit: Eric Lee/POOL/CNP/startraksphoto.com/Cover Images
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- President Donald Trump holds a press briefing on the US Supreme Court decision to block the use of an emergency law to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Feb 2026 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- President Donald Trump holds a press briefing on the US Supreme Court decision to block the use of an emergency law to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Feb 2026 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
I’m sure this has been discussed ad nauseam somewhere I can find, but serious question: if without the 14th Amendment, a baby is born on US soil to parents with no documented citizenship, does this child have no citizenship at all?
It would be arguable. That’s the way it was before the 14th Amendment was passed and they (the party in power) could decide who was considered a “citizen” for the purpose of passing on citizenship to their offspring. Cases were brought by African Americans, Asians and Native Americans, with varying results, even after the 14th Amendment was passed. Interesting piece of trivia: some people in the US Territories are not considered “citizens” of the United States, but they are considered “nationals”.
Thank you for that response. I guess there would be endless legal challenges and human rights groups involved. And this is probably a current issue right now but how does one get deported if no other country recognizes their citizenship? I suppose people in detention centers right now are facing that scenario.
But with a baby born on US soil, the complexities are bewildering. Let’s say the sperm has US citizenship. Some dude in a bar. No names were exchanged. But an easy DNA test will establish the sperm’s family heritage. Okay I’m getting into the weeds here but we don’t live in the 19th century. We can’t just repeal the 14th amendment and pretend America is a whites only club.
It may also depend on the citizenship of the parents.
– There are countries that have birthright citizenship (automatic citizenship if you are born on their soil – juis soli), others do not.
– Others have citizenship based on the mother’s citizenship, others on the father’s, or on both. Where the child is born factors in or it doesn’t depending on the country. (‘right of blood’ or juis sanguinis)
Kavanaugh gave him a road map to doing it legislatively in his dissent. The hope is that the Republicans are so disorganized and their majority so slim that they would need Democratic help to get it past the first hurdle (being passed by Congress). After that, it would be held up in court for years. The argument would be that there needs to be a Constitutional amendment, which has to be ratified by 2/3 of Congress and then put to a vote to the general citizenry.
I haven’t read Kavanaugh’s dissent (I’m sure it’s brilliant 🤣), but an amendment is legally equivalent to what is contained in the body of the constitution. Therefore, it cannot be simply waved away with legislation. Overturning the 14th amendment would require another amendment which is prohibitively difficult. In this case, probably impossible. Still, 5-4 is way too close for comfort.
This should have been a unanimous vote. I’m really freighted that it wasn’t. Add that to the other horrifying decisions that came out this week and it’s pretty clear the court’s majority supports autocracy.
It’s gross and awful that he did that. Saying just pass a law.
Unless you are naturalized into citizenship, you are all birthright cases. It’s about birth not parentage, yes? Thus citizenship becomes discretionary; they’re only starting with parentage because of anti immigration sentiment and racism. It could be anything- ethnicity religion, political activity. They’re also looking to denaturalize as well.
Their stated goal is to deport 100 million people, roughly a third of the population. BIPoC currently make up 40 percent of the population, so do the math. They are doing ALL the things–stripping people of status (like TPS and DACA) and deporting them; denaturalizing people so they can THEN strip them of status to deport them; and keeping legal residents from re-entering the country if they have so much as been CHARGED with a crime (no conviction necessary). Things are about to get really dark if you’re not white.
I know I’m just stating obvious things here, but when there’s no logic to an argument, the simplest points scream the loudest. The I in BIPOC is for indigenous. The B of course predominantly refers to people whose ancestors were kidnapped from their homelands. In either case, deport to where? Is Greenland preparing to take in 100 million people?
@Mightymolly, very little of what they do makes sense. Deporting DACA students who were brought to the US as children, many of whom have never been to the ancestral homeland and don’t speak the language, makes no sense. Stripping people of permanent residency for what may technically be a crime that hasn’t been proven (especially considering that even driving at certain number of miles above the speed limit is a “crime” that one can contest) doesn’t make sense. De-naturalizing people, allegedly because of fraud, but they get to the decide what constitutes a “fraud” doesn’t make sense. A lot of innocent people who did things “the right way” are going to get caught up in that net and get deported, or worse, get indefinitely detained in one of the concentration camps were there is no fresh food and no due process or get shipped off to a third country where they have no connections and no means to even go back to their ancestral homeland.
Of course, criminals who support Trump are exempt from deportation. And if they can afford a bribe, can probably get a pardon.
Correct, it is about birth
Thanks. Directing the conversation to parentage is like diverting arguments for gun control by talking about bullet size and magazines. The discussion goes off-track so quickly this way.
As I recall, Trump Towers in Florida advertised in Russia for pregnant women to come here to have their anchor babies. What’s different?
Those Russians were white women
They don’t care about the “where” and they don’t care about statelessness. If anything they’ll send people to the worst places possible, and continue to separate families as part of the cruelty. We’ve seen this playback before.
Sorry, last line, meant ‘playbook.’
Ever since Lindsay Grahams turn around, I have been wondering… What the deep dive gossip (and blackmail) the Republican party has on … everybody in government, judicial … Don’t you?
Yeah, something is going on. Every last one of them (Rubio, Vance, Johnson) did a significant and notable about-face on trump. Must be Russian kompromat.
While I generally agree, I also think its important to not underestimate the power of…..well, power. and having it. These men aren’t principled, so they’ll switch on issues if it keeps them in power – and right now, being in power means being on Trump’s side. These men don’t like Trump. I dont think anyone in his administration likes him – but right now he’s their useful idiot (and considering his mental state, he’s more useful than he was 8 years ago.)
So could it be kompromat? Could it be blackmail? Yes, and very likely there is some of that. But these people saw a roadmap to being elected or appointed and staying in those positions and they’re following it.
And don’t underestimate the power of physical threats to them and their families. I have now heard a number of Democrats say that this is a real thing happening to Republicans in elected office.
@brassyrebel that’s a good point too.
None of them are turning on the Dumpster Fire. They’re getting everything they want (white men running everything), enriching themselves unethically and illegally without anyone stopping them, while pretending to turn on him.
Vance and his self-hating gay billionaire funder are just waiting for Dumpster to die so Vance can be president for life. He’ll finish the 15% of the Heritage Foundation agenda that isn’t completed. The other 85% they’ve accomplished.
@Brassy Rebel
That was a point I wanted to add as well. It is clearest when there is a repub voting against one of the felon’s policies, they have a “meeting”, and somehow now they understand how great it is (War powers resolution comes to mind).
The meltdown over this on conservative social media illustrates how stupid and bigoted so many Americans are. People who were pushing Amy Covid Barrett for years before her nomination are now demanding her impeachment and removal. Conservative Pundits are wailing that everything is now destroyed and their children will never have the rights they grew up with and lost yesterday – NO rights were lost in this case yesterday. Everything is exactly the same as it was when the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868. Also, those who scream about what the founders wanted are complete imbeciles. The only laws on citizenship written by the founders were that, so long as an immigrant was white, had no known criminal record, and had lived here for 2 years, that person could naturalize. US had no immigration restrictions until the 1870 with the Page Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, both of which targeted the Chinese and the Irish.
Thanks as always @Lightpurple. For years (decades now?) it’s been so irritating to listen to people talk about how their grandparents came to the US “legally” — when for most of them, there were no laws to violate. These descendants are usually referring to the great turn of the (last) century wave from Southern and Eastern Europe. Those ancestors, once they passed through immigration checks (mostly for communicable disease, disability etc.) walked onto US soil and made their way into a new life. There’s so much ignorance; immigration studies need to be a better-developed part of every high school history class.
It is their job to incite fear in their voter base. Facts and reality mean nothing.
I’m surprised at Gorsuch and actually kind of surprised at Kavanaugh. Even though his concurrence was messy and gave Trump a roadmap to overturning birthright citizenship – it was still a vote for the final ruling.
Trump tried to overturn a constitutional amendment via executive order. That’s not how the process works – and even if someone disagreed with the meaning of the 14th Amendment, there are paths to get SCOTUS to sign off on a different interpretation without a messy and not well planned EO. Some of the justices were always going to have a problem with that.
Basically i’m glad for the result but it should not have been so close.
Kavanaugh of “Kavanaugh stops” ? Entirely consistent with his approach. With that kind of double-speak making it appear that he does the “right thing” while laying out a way to further discriminate, he must have his eye on succeeding Roberts.
See I dont think he cares one iota about doing the right thing for ANY reason which is why this surprises me lol.
Then he’s just giving himself some cover — doing sort of the right thing for the wrong reason. He’s such a tool.
The birthrate in the US is the lowest in history. Last year more people left the US than entered. The median age is just under 40. We have a declining workforce and an aging population. Immigration law makes it difficult to become a citizen and nearly impossible to adjust status if you are undocumented, If the US is going to have a a strong economy, we need young workers. BUT – Stephen Miller, DJT and their minions are spending billions of our tax dollars to break up families, detain and deport law abiding, hard working, tax paying people who want to live and work in the US. These are not only human rights violations – Trump’s “policies” are destroying our economy.
They’re counting on abortion bans making up the difference in less than a generation. A lot of poor whites have bought into “replacement theory” and are having a lot kids. Erica Kirk, Usha Vance and Stephen Miller’s wife (can’t be bothered to look up her name) are repeating over and over that (white) girls (because that’s who they’re selling this nonsense to) need to get married as early as possible, forgo an education and start cranking out kids. It’s all a coordinated effort. That and importing whites from other countries as refugees (to bypass a lot of the red tape of immigration law).
Abortion bans AND bans on birth control.
@Mumster – You don’t have to answer this but I kinda feel like you’re a teacher. You have been dropping all kinds of knowledge in this thread (and thanks for that!) but if you are a teacher, you’re probably muzzled at work so you need other outlets to teach the true facts. Even if I’m wrong, I appreciate you.
And it’s both sad and horrifying and counter-productive because abortion bans result in women dying – women who otherwise could rear those children and potentially bear more.
@Mumster: any country dominated by stupid white people is doomed. That’s the flaw in their plan for a bumper crop of white babies.
According to them only Black women get abortions so I think it’s hilarious that conservatives didn’t get what was going on here. They are trying to force white women to give birth, to not work. I mean we’re all going to be homeless with these policies, but at least you pushed out a white kid.
Don’t give them too much credit. They upheld the state bans on trans girls in sports, and I’m sure they’re about to overturn assault weapon bans, thereby allowing mass shootings to continue. You know they hope certain groups are the target of said shooters.
And allowing more big money in political campaigns, that’s one of the original sins in American elections.
This SC, although not agreeing with orange taco man this time, is under his thumb. Or maybe we should say, “under his eye”.
Fine let’s start by removing citizenship and throwing out all of Dumpster Fire’s ‘anchor babies’ born to undocumented women in the country without visas. That eliminates four out of the five Dumpster sprogs. The one he hates, Tiffany, gets to stay.
While we’re doing that, I’d love an accounting of how many abortions he’s paid for and in some cases I suspect forced women to have.
It’s the most corrupt court. And I am am done with anyone thinking these 6 fools should be allowed anywhere near deciding what we all have to obey. We need court reform now.