Born in the USA: Supreme Court rebuffs Trump's bid to end birthright citizenship

Supreme Court rebuffs Trump's bid to end birthright citizenship

The TOI correspondent from Washington: The US Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt President Donald Trump one of the most consequential legal defeats of his second term, striking down his executive order seeking to deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the U.S unlawfully or temporarily.

In a 6-3 opinion, the court ruled that the US Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship to nearly everyone born on American soil.Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by four women on the bench, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Amy Coney Barrett, concluding that children born in the United States to parents who are present unlawfully or temporarily are nevertheless "born in the United States" and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Under the 14th Amendment, he wrote, they are citizens at birth.

The ruling reaffirmed more than a century of constitutional precedent dating to the Supreme Court's landmark 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which has long been understood to interpret the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment as extending automatic citizenship to almost all children born in the United States, with narrow exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats.

The dissent, led by Justice Clarence Thomas and joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, argued that the majority had extended the Citizenship Clause beyond what the Reconstruction Congress intended after the Civil War. Thomas wrote that the 14th Amendment was enacted principally to guarantee citizenship to formerly enslaved people and contended that the Court had transformed it into a protection for circumstances "the Reconstruction Congress never contemplated.

"The dissenting justices also argued that migrants are temporary visitors and are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States in the words of the 14th Amendment. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment on narrower statutory grounds, producing a 6-3 result invalidating the executive order while leaving a five-justice majority squarely reaffirming the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.Trump signed the executive order on his first day back in office, also arguing that children born to undocumented immigrants or temporary visa holders are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US and therefore do not qualify for automatic citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The order was challenged by states, immigrant-rights organizations and affected families, and every lower court to consider the issue blocked its enforcement before the dispute reached the Supreme Court.The ruling immediately reverberated through American politics, the decision seen as representing another judicial setback for President Trump after the Court earlier invalidated key elements of his global tariff policy. In a social media post, Trump said the SCOTUS decision is “too bad for our Country” and blithely asserted that he could “easily make it up in Congress through Legislation,” and that “no long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary.

” He urged Congress to start immediately to “work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship.”The SCOTUS decision nevertheless removes one of the administration's signature immigration initiatives from the executive branch's reach. Constitutional scholars across the ideological spectrum have long argued that changing birthright citizenship would almost certainly require either a constitutional amendment or a dramatic reversal of settled Supreme Court precedent rather than executive action alone.

Amending the Constitution would require approval by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states, an exceptionally high political hurdle given the deeply polarized country. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office joined the legal challenge, welcomed the ruling, calling birthright citizenship "a foundational constitutional right" and saying the Court had reaffirmed that every child born in the United States is equal under the law.

Indian-American activists too celebrated the ruling, calling it "a landmark victory for immigrant families (that) reaffirms the constitutional promise of equal protection.

""Indian and South Asian immigrant families are among those most directly threatened by Trump's executive order — communities navigating long visa backlogs and uncertain immigration timelines, where children are often born here long before their parents have a clear path to permanence.

Today, the Supreme Court looked at those families and said: your children are American. They belong here." said Chintan Patel, Executive Director of Indian American Impact.Conservative legal reaction was more divided. Originalist scholars sympathetic to the administration argued that the Court missed an opportunity to revisit what they regard as an overly expansive interpretation of the Citizenship Clause.

Other conservative constitutional lawyers, however, acknowledged that Wong Kim Ark ruling has been deeply embedded in American constitutional law for generations and that overturning such precedent would have created legal uncertainty.

Liberal constitutional scholars hailed the decision as a reaffirmation of textual fidelity, historical practice and judicial restraint.The ruling also exposed fresh tensions within Trump's conservative coalition, with some online activists sharply criticizing Conservatives Roberts and Barrett for joining the majority.

Barrett, whom Trump appointed in 2020, has increasingly demonstrated an independent judicial approach in several high-profile cases.Separately, Barrett and her husband, Jesse, have seven children, including two adopted from Haiti, a personal fact that became the subject of online trolling after the decision. There is, however, no evidence that her family circumstances influenced her judicial reasoning, and her opinion appears to have rested on constitutional analysis rather than personal considerations.

MAGA activists also raged about the court condoning "birth tourism" with hyperbolic accounts of invading hordes coming to America with the explicit purpose of having US-born children.

The US is home to about 14 million undocumented immigrants, in addition to millions who come on work visas such as H1B. They have given birth to millions of US-citizen children. According to the Pew Research Center there are more than six million people born in the U.S who live with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent.

Immigration advocates have long argued that immigration and assimilation is central to American history and birthright citizenship is central to it.For the Trump administration, the ruling is unlikely to end the political debate. While executive action has now been foreclosed, Republicans are expected to continue pressing Congress for statutory immigration reforms and may renew calls for a constitutional amendment, even though the prospects of securing the supermajorities required for such a change remain remote. The decision leaves intact one of the defining features of US constitutional law while ensuring that birthright citizenship will remain a potent issue in the nation's immigration politics.