The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Birthright Citizenship
On June 30th, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Barbara that President Trump’s January 2025 executive order on birthright citizenship can’t stand. The Order would have denied citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who were in the country unlawfully or only temporarily. The vote was 6–3, but each of the justices reached this result through different means, while only five of them said the Constitution itself rules the order out.
The case came down to a few words in the Fourteenth Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The administration argued that children of unlawfully or temporarily present parents weren’t “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Every lower court to consider that argument had rejected it, and so did the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the five-justice majority. He traced citizenship from English common law through the Civil War and Reconstruction, stressing that the amendment was a response to Dred Scott, which had denied citizenship to Black Americans. Children born here to these parents, he concluded, meet both parts of the clause, and under the Constitution they are “citizens at birth.” The majority also dismissed the argument that citizenship depends on the parents’ domicile, calling it a revisionist reading and finding little sign that the amendment’s ratifiers had any such limit in mind.
Justice Jackson joined the majority in full but wrote separately, mostly to answer Justice Thomas. Thomas had suggested the Citizenship Clause was a race-conscious fix meant for freed slaves and their descendants. Jackson pointed out how oddly that sits with his long-standing defense of a “colorblind” Constitution, and she argued that the Reconstruction Amendments carried a broader anti-caste principle. Citizenship, she wrote, was meant to be “the right to have rights.”
Justice Kavanaugh wouldn’t go as far as the majority. He agreed the order had to be blocked, but on statutory grounds: it conflicts with 8 U.S.C. §1401(a), the federal law on birthright citizenship. He disagreed with the majority’s constitutional holding and wrote that the Fourteenth Amendment wouldn’t stop Congress from adding new exceptions. That’s the practical difference between the two opinions. A constitutional ruling is far harder to change than a statute is.
Thomas wrote the principal dissent opinion. In his account, the clause has always demanded more than birth on American soil: allegiance and domicile too. Alito and Gorsuch each wrote separate dissents as well. Thomas also honed-in on the devaluation of the status of being an American citizen if everyone born on American soil is granted automatic citizenship. Finally, Thomas disagreed with the historical rhetoric presented by Justice Roberts, instead insisting the fourteenth amendment was meant to address the children of former slaves, and did not extend to today’s problems.
The result is settled for now: a child born on U.S. soil is a citizen, whatever their parents’ immigration status. What isn’t settled is the justification or if it’ll continue to stand. Five justices anchored the answer in the Constitution itself, which is far harder to undo than a mere statute. Kavanaugh took a narrower route, and Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch dissented, with Thomas laying out a very different reading of the history. The argument over what “subject to the jurisdiction” means didn’t end on June 30th and it will continue to unfold over the coming years.
