Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Effort To Restrict Birthright Citizenship

The Supreme Court on Tuesday delivered a blow to Donald Trump‘s efforts to restrict birthright citizenship, a key component of his immigration agenda.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

Roberts was joined in the majority opinion by justices Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurring in part and dissenting in part, and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.

News networks were on court watch for the final day of the term, with CNN’s chyron reading “Supreme Court reaffirms birthright citizenship in loss for Trump,” MSNBC reading “Supreme Court rejects Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship,” and Fox News bannering with “Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship.”

The decision strikes down Trump’s executive order, issued on the first day of his second term, that declared that children born of parents “unlawfully or temporarily present” in the United States were not subject to its jurisdiction do not qualify for citizenship.

That was immediately challenged, citing 128 years of precedent. The Trump administration argued that more than “natural allegiance” was required of citizenship, arguing that it should be the place of a person’s permanent home. But Roberts wrote that the “trouble is that there is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view.”

Roberts wrote, “If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design. Words appearing frequently in the Executive Order—’mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘lawful,’ ‘temporary’— are absent from the Clause.”

Alito wrote in his dissent, “The Court’s interpretation saddles this country with an ancient British rule that even the United Kingdom has abandoned, as have other countries whose legal systems share the same pedigree. The Court’s interpretation preserves a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally. Immigrants naturally prefer affluent countries where economic opportunities are available. Other than Canada, the United States will be the only affluent nation where birth alone is enough to establish citizenship.”

The final day also came with the possibility of a retirement, and NPR briefing posted news that Alito was stepping away. It briefly had reporters scrambling before the story was taken down with the editor’s note, “It was published in error.” So far there have been no reports of retirements.

The Supreme Court also delivered opinions striking down spending limits on coordination between political candidates and parties, further eroding efforts at campaign finance reform in the aftermath of the Citizen’s United ruling in 2010. The court also ruled that states were within the law and Constitution in restricting transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.

Trump has not yet commented on the ruling. But he did post earlier on Tuesday a story from a right-wing news outlet, headlined, “Trump’s efforts to reverse birthright citizenship may succeed with or without SCOTUS.” It referred to efforts to achieve the same goals via congressional legislation.

House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement, “The 14th Amendment was enshrined in our Constitution during Reconstruction to ensure that formerly enslaved Black people would not have their citizenship questioned on the basis of their race. More than 150 years later, it has withstood the unconstitutional attack launched by Donald Trump and his most sycophantic and xenophobic enablers.”

Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigration group America’s Voice, said in a statement, “Today’s ruling upholds the Constitution and protects the rights of all Americans from Trump’s mass deportation fantasies.

“The promise of America includes the constitutional right that every child born here starts with equal footing and with the same rights and protections regardless of their parents’ immigration status. This, in turn, has afforded our nation stability and social cohesion. We are strongest when citizenship is secure, equal, and grounded in the Constitution — not subject to political change.”

More to come.