Trump plans Supreme Court attendance on birthright citizenship
Donald Trump becomes the first sitting president to attend Supreme Court oral arguments, as justices hear his challenge to birthright citizenship .
Objective Facts
The Supreme Court is taking up one of the term's most consequential cases, President Donald Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens . Trump plans to sit in on Wednesday's Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship, making him the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the nation's highest court . The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, is part of his Republican administration's broad immigration crackdown . Every lower court to have considered the issue has found the order illegal and prevented it from taking effect . A definitive ruling by the nation's highest court is expected by early summer .
Left-Leaning Perspective
The American Civil Liberties Union legal director stated 'We have the president of the United States trying to radically reinterpret the definition of American citizenship' . The ACLU countered that Trump is trying by executive order to change the meaning of the 14th Amendment, and argued that the consequences would be that 'every month, tens of thousands of U.S.-born babies will be stripped of their citizenship' and 'they may be stateless because their parents' country of nationality may not consider them to be citizens' . An argument heading to the Supreme Court is built in part on a post-Civil War campaign that scholars say was steeped in anti-Black and anti-Chinese racism . Experts on Native American law have questioned the government's reliance on the Elk v. Wilkins case, telling NBC News it was limited specifically to the unique status of tribes under U.S. law . If the Supreme Court agrees with the Administration's reading, it would declare that the 14th Amendment has been misunderstood for generations, and Frost said there would be little in principle to prevent it from looking backward, raising the possibility of challenges to the citizenship of people whose status rests on the longstanding interpretation . Left-leaning outlets emphasize the practical chaos and humanitarian costs. The Trump executive order will stigmatize and send a message of exclusion to many others, and excluding people born here will create a permanent underclass of people who have never been to another country and may be rendered stateless . They focus on the fact that while Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his rhetoric and actions, the birthright restrictions also would apply to people who are legally in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards, or permanent resident status , showing the order's broader reach than administration rhetoric suggests.
Right-Leaning Perspective
Some conservative legal scholars assert that the long-held understanding of the 14th Amendment is wrong, with one arguing 'The executive is required at the first instance to interpret the law, and the executive is not bound by an erroneous conventional wisdom that emerged late in the day' and calling this 'the executive's attempt at a course correction' . Trump's lawyers argued in court filings that the 14th Amendment was drafted for 'newly freed slaves and their children, not on the children of aliens who are temporarily present in the United States or of illegal aliens' . Supporters of the Trump administration's policy argue the 14th Amendment was originally intended to grant citizenship to formerly enslaved people—not to children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors, and Trump has said expanding birthright citizenship beyond that original scope places a strain on the country's resources and was never the amendment's intent . Senator Ted Cruz states as a policy matter, birthright citizenship is stupid because it incentivizes illegal immigration . Right-leaning arguments center on a narrow originalist reading of the 14th Amendment's intent and the phrase 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' Solicitor General D. John Sauer defended Trump's order as legal, saying that automatically granting citizenship to people born in the United States 'demeans the priceless and profound gift of American citizenship' . The right frames this as correcting a misunderstanding of original constitutional meaning rather than rewriting it.
Deep Dive
The citizenship clause at the center of the case is part of the 14th Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in 1868 and was intended to overrule the Supreme Court's notorious 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as enslaved persons was not entitled to protection from the federal courts because he was not a U.S. citizen . The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, three years after slavery was officially outlawed in the US, and overturned the Dred Scott v Sandford Supreme Court ruling . In the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to parents of Chinese descent, when he returned from China, immigration officials would not allow him to enter on the ground he was not a U.S. citizen, but a majority of the Supreme Court agreed he was a U.S. citizen . The core dispute hinges on textual interpretation. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch ripped into the Trump administration's central argument that to be entitled to birthright citizenship, parents must have 'domicile' in the United States, with Gorsuch questioning how domicile would be determined for every single person and shutting down arguments relying on Wong Kim Ark . Chief Justice John Roberts also expressed trouble with the Trump administration's argument, saying the examples given (children of ambassadors, children of hostile invaders) struck him as 'quirky' and that he wasn't sure how to 'get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples' . These questions from conservative justices during oral arguments suggest potential weakness in the administration's position even among the court's ideological majority. There is a far cleaner and easier way for the justices to decide this case: Congress passed a law in 1940 and 1952 echoing the amendment's language, and by then lawmakers would have largely recognized birthright citizenship as understood today; Trump's executive order cannot nullify a law passed by Congress; and a ruling on those grounds would be consistent with where several members of the court's conservative majority have been for years, viewing unilateral presidential action to enact sweeping policies with skepticism . This pathway could allow the court to invalidate the order without reaching the broader constitutional question—a potential compromise position reflecting institutional deference concerns among some conservative justices.