The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will decide whether Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship through executive order is constitutional. The justices will hear the president’s appeal against a lower court ruling that overturned a decree that revoked the right to citizenship – guaranteed by the US Constitution since the 19th century – for children of immigrants who are in the country irregularly or temporarily. The Supreme Court’s decision, expected in early summer, could redefine who is considered an American and who is not.
Trump signed the executive order in question on the first day of his second term. The decree ordered government agencies to stop issuing citizenship documents to children of parents who are in the country irregularly or who visit the country temporarily. This is despite the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, states: “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.” It was approved after the Civil War to guarantee citizenship to former slaves and their descendants.
Trump’s order never went into effect. Lawsuits did not take long and the procedure was soon blocked in the courts. The Republican government appealed to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to consider whether the lower court judges had exceeded their authority by granting a national suspension of an executive order like the one that ended the right to birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court omitted to comment on the constitutionality of the decree, but it gave the president a very important victory by ruling that federal judges — of which there are hundreds across the country — were limited in their powers to oppose the Republican agenda through these stays.
Shortly after the ruling last June, a group of people represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a class-action lawsuit in New Hampshire against the decree that ended birthright citizenship. A federal judge blocked the order again, but before the appeals court could rule on that decision, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court in September to take up the case, the same case the justices have now agreed to hear.
“No president can change the fundamental promise of citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment,” Cecilia Wang, national legal director for the ACLU, said in a statement Friday. “For more than 150 years, the law and our national tradition have held that every person born in the United States is a citizen at birth. The federal courts have unanimously held that President Trump’s executive order conflicts with the Constitution, the 1898 Supreme Court decision, and the law enacted by Congress. We look forward to putting this matter to rest once and for all at the Supreme Court.”
The case reaches a Trump-friendly, conservative-majority Supreme Court that has ruled in his favor on countless occasions during his first months back in office. But in this dispute in particular, ruling in favor of the Republican would violate a fundamental principle of the United States Constitution and the country’s immigration policy. If the decree goes into effect, millions of people could face new hurdles when certifying their newborn children as US citizens.
The executive order places several restrictions on obtaining birthright citizenship. Under the order, this right does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States when that person’s mother was an illegal resident of the United States and the father was not a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident at the time of birth. Nor when the mother’s presence in the United States at the time of the birth was lawful but temporary because, for example, she only had a visa, and the father was not a US citizen or legal permanent resident at the time of the birth.
Trump’s desire to end birthright citizenship is part of his broader campaign against immigration. In his obsession with carrying out the “largest deportation” in US history, the president experimented with stripping citizenship and ended programs and protections that for years had allowed millions of immigrants to live and work in the country legally, leaving them vulnerable to being arrested by immigration agents and expelled, often without due process.