On January 20, Donald Trump signed an executive order that ended birthright citizenship to children born to non-US citizens or lawful permanent residents. The order brushed aside the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution and barred federal agencies from recognizing such children as US citizens.
The order sent the entire nation into a frenzy. Twenty-two states, the ACLU, and multiple immigrant advocacy groups filed lawsuits challenging the order as unconstitutional. And multiple federal judges agreed with them. Federal judges from Seattle to Massachusetts issued nationwide injunctions, blocking the order from taking effect. In March, the Trump Administration appealed the injunctions in the Supreme Court, seeking to limit the scope, while allowing partial enforcement of the orders.
And on June 27, SCOTUS handed Trump a technical, but powerful, victory. The Supreme Court limited the power of lower courts to step in and block policies on a national level in the short term as they review its legality. Surprisingly, the ruling does not settle the issue of whether the executive order is constitutional.
With that, Trump scored another win—not by changing the Constitution, but by outmaneuvering its guardrails. The battle for birthright citizenship is far from over. But from here on out, challengers will be forced to jump through more procedural hoops just to get a seat at the table.
What Does This Mean For Birthright Citizenship?
Birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment guarantees that if you’re born in the United States, you are automatically a U.S. citizen. It ensures that all people are equal under the law, regardless of background or ancestry. The Court didn’t rule on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship itself, so birthright citizenship is still safe. But it certainly raises the stakes.
The ruling does take a stance against nationwide injunctions by district courts. The Supreme Court ruled that, in most cases, district court judges cannot issue nationwide injunctions to block federal policies. They can only grant relief to the individuals or groups who brought a particular lawsuit. This means that courts would be forced to allow harmful or unconstitutional policies to take effect in some places while being blocked in others. The end result: a chaotic and confusing patchwork of rules.
When it comes to birthright citizenship, there could be drastic differences depending on where you live. This is especially dangerous in cases where one’s rights, status, and safety are at risk. We are looking at a scenario where a baby born to immigrants in California or New York might be recognized as a citizen, but a baby born in Texas on the same day might not be.
At the end of the day, constitutional protections like birthright citizenship shouldn’t depend on where you live or whether you can file a lawsuit in time. Unfortunately, this ruling has created a reality in which that could be the case.
The Bigger Picture: A Court in Trump’s Shadow
Since the start of his second term, Trump has won case after case on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket. Earlier this week, a Supreme Court ruling allowed Trump to deport certain migrants to countries other than their homeland, marking the 10th time the court has granted a request from Trump on the emergency docket.
The court has allowed Trump to fire board members at independent agencies, remove transgender Americans from military service, and end other protections for migrants, even those in the country legally. Friday’s ruling on birthright citizenship, from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is his biggest win yet.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the conservative majority had “shamefully” played along with the administration’s “gamesmanship” in the case. Sotomayor has described it as an attempt to enforce a “patently unconstitutional” policy. Under the policy, the Trump administration is not asking the Supreme Court to bless the policy, but instead to limit the power of federal judges around the country.
“The court’s decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution,” she wrote. Separately, Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared to raise the stakes of the injunction case even more, accusing her conservative colleagues of creating “an existential threat to the rule of law” by allowing Trump to “violate the Constitution.”
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