(AP Photo / Mark Schiefelbein, File)

Key Takeaways:

• The Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of Trump’s birthright citizenship order.

• Lower courts have uniformly struck the order down as violating the 14th Amendment.

• The administration argues the Amendment was never intended to cover children of illegal immigrants.

This is the showdown everyone knew would eventually hit the Supreme Court: Trump’s attempt to narrow birthright citizenship to exclude children born here to illegal immigrants or temporary visitors. Lower courts slapped the order down immediately, treating the 14th Amendment as essentially untouchable—despite plenty of long-running legal debates about what “subject to the jurisdiction” actually meant in 1868. Now the Supreme Court will finally have the last word.

Critics insist this is settled law, but it’s only “settled” because past Congresses and administrations refused to test the limits. Trump is the first president willing to challenge the automatic-citizenship interpretation head-on, and Republican-led states are lining up behind him. If the Court sides with the administration, immigration policy changes overnight; if it doesn’t, the constitutional door slams shut for another generation.

Either way, this case is going to redefine immigration politics heading into 2026. The stakes are enormous and everyone knows it.

From Western Journal:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to take up the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s order on birthright citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

The justices will hear Trump’s appeal of a lower court ruling that struck down the citizenship restrictions. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.

The case will be argued in the spring. A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.

The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed Jan. 20, the first day of his second term, is part of his Republican administration’s broad immigration crackdown. Other actions include immigration enforcement surges in several cities and the first peacetime invocation of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act.

The administration is facing multiple court challenges, and the high court has sent mixed signals in emergency orders it has issued. The justices effectively stopped the use of the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without court hearings. But the Supreme Court allowed the resumption of sweeping immigration stops in the Los Angeles area after a lower court blocked the practice of stopping people solely based on their race, language, job, or location.

The justices also are weighing the administration’s emergency appeal to be allowed to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area for immigration enforcement actions. A lower court has indefinitely prevented the deployment.

Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. His order would reject the interpretation that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.

In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.

The Supreme Court, however, did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order was constitutional.

Every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that black people, including former slaves, had citizenship. Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally.

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