The Supreme Court has delivered a brutal blow to President Donald Trump, striking down his bid to end birthright citizenship for millions of Americans.
Two of his own hand-picked justices turned on him in a case which made him the first sitting president ever to attend Supreme Court arguments.
So important to Trump was removing the fundamental constitutional right that he had signed an executive order to try to overturn it on the first day of his return to office.
But on the very last day of the court’s term, in a 6-3 vote, the court ruled that Trump lacked the authority to override the citizenship protections guaranteed under the 14th Amendment.
Trump-appointee Amy Coney Barrett ruled to strike down Trump’s executive order. So too did fellow Trump pick Brett Kavanaugh, even though he disagreed with the majority view that Trump’s executive order violated the constitution.
The pair signed on to the judgment of the chief justice, John Roberts, and the liberal justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
But the ultra-conservative wing of Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented, signaling they would have overturned a century and a half of citizenship rights.
The 14th amendment states that all persons born or naturalized in the United States “are citizens of the United States.”
Writing for the majority, Roberts said there was “scant evidence” for the administration’s “revisionist view” of this.
“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,” Roberts wrote.
“We keep that promise today.”
The ruling represents a stunning judicial setback for Trump, who is still fuming over the court’s decision earlier this year to strike down his tariffs.
In a sign of how much was at stake, the court’s decision spanned almost 200 pages of opinion and dissent.
Trump has previously raged against the justices in anticipation that his order would be struck down, but had fairly reserved response on Tuesday, simply noting the decision was “too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process.”
“No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary! Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support!” he wrote.
Writing for the minority, Alito said that “this is one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court, and in my judgment, the Court has made a serious mistake.”
Kavanaugh, meanwhile, took the unusual step of filing a partial dissent—even though he voted with the majority.
“In my view, the Executive Order does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment,” he wrote.
“But the Order does contravene a federal statute... Congress could—consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment—amend (the statute) or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But Congress has not yet done so.“
The vote was not expected to be as close. But civil rights groups and other advocates nonetheless welcomed the decision.
“This is a win for the Constitution and for every child born on American soil,” attorney and former ambassador Norm Eisen wrote on X.
MAGA-world, on the other hand, was furious, with many once again taking aim at Barrett, who on Monday delivered another blow to Trump on mail-in voting.
“Amy Coney Barrett is the living, walking definition of a DEI hire and arguably Trump’s biggest mistake from Term 1,” wrote MAGA YouTuber Red Eagle Politics.
In April, Trump made the unprecedented decision to sit in on oral arguments, staring down the court’s nine justices as they quizzed his Solicitor General D. John Sauer.
However, the president left the hearing abruptly after less than 90 minutes of watching several of his own handpicked justices including Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch—tear Sauer’s arguments apart.
Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee who had created presidential immunity for Trump while he was out of office, also had a mic-drop moment when Sauer tried to make the point that “we’re in a new world where eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S citizen.”
“It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution,” Roberts replied.
Tuesday’s decision bookmarks a years-long legal and political battle over birthright citizenship, a right that has been recognized since the Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
The 1898 decision largely established that babies born in the US are legally citizens. However, the Trump administration argued the 14th Amendment only applied to former slaves.
That would mean babies born to individuals who are not “domiciled” are not citizens under the amendment.
Sauer argued the reinterpretation was justice given the threat of unchecked immigration and “birth tourism”.
Had the Supreme Court upheld the president’s order, the ACLU estimated it would have stripped some 250,000 babies of their U.S. citizenship and some 4.8 million people over the next two decades.
But Trump has repeatedly stated false claims about birthright citizenship since the court took up the case, and ramped them up as he braced for defeat.
He also acknowledged the decision was unlikely to go his way earlier this month, telling reporters it would be a “disgrace” if the court didn’t rule in his favor.
“Birthright citizen is done by no other country, no other country in the world the way we’re doing it—we’re a laughing stock,” Trump said, ignoring the fact that dozens of countries confer citizenship at birth with no conditions.
