The Supreme Court split sharply over birthright citizenship Tuesday, ruling 6-3 that President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting automatic citizenship violated the Constitution, according to the supplied source.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are still “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
The ruling rejected an order Trump issued on the first day of his second term. The order directed that only children born on U.S. soil to legal residents would automatically receive American citizenship.
Thomas Says the Majority Misread Reconstruction History
Justice Clarence Thomas filed a lengthy dissent joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, arguing that the court had stretched the 14th Amendment beyond what its framers intended after the Civil War.
The amendment states, in part, “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.”
Thomas wrote that both the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause “guaranteed citizenship to persons born and domiciled in the United States regardless of their race.” But, he added, “Neither guaranteed citizenship to persons who were not domiciled in the United States.”
According to Thomas, the post-Civil War amendment was aimed at overturning the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, which held that Black Americans were not citizens.
“Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans,” Thomas wrote. “They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority.”
‘Today’s Opinion Devalues That Citizenship’
Thomas accused the majority of again “repurposing” the 14th Amendment to protect rights he said the Reconstruction Congress did not contemplate.
“Today, the Court does so again by recognizing a constitutional right to citizenship for the children of all foreign birth tourists and illegal aliens,” Thomas wrote.
He concluded with a warning about the ruling’s long-term durability.
“I am not sure that today’s opinion will stand the test of time,” Thomas wrote. “The Citizenship Clause added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship. Today’s opinion devalues that citizenship.”
Alito Warns of Future Consequences
Justice Samuel Alito also dissented, writing that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship only on a person born or naturalized in the United States if that person is also “not subject to any foreign power.”
Alito said the majority interpreted “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to mean subject to the laws that apply to anyone present inside U.S. borders.
He argued that the court’s interpretation “preserves a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally.”
“Other than Canada, the United States will be the only affluent nation where birth alone is enough to establish citizenship,” Alito wrote, according to the supplied source.
Alito closed by saying that if the Constitution required that result, the country would have to accept it or amend the Constitution. But he said the 14th Amendment “does not include the rule the Court now imposes on the country.”
“In my judgment, the Court has made a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future,” Alito wrote.
Figures Cited in the Debate
The supplied source cites the Migration Policy Institute as estimating that birth tourism accounts for up to 26,000 babies born annually in the United States who are later taken back to their home countries with U.S. citizenship rights.
It also cites the Center for Immigration Studies as reporting that between 225,000 and 250,000 births to illegal immigrants occurred in 2023, representing 7 percent of the 3.6 million total U.S. births that year.
The majority’s ruling leaves in place the long-standing interpretation that children born on American soil generally receive citizenship at birth under the 14th Amendment, while the dissents signal that the legal and political fight over the Citizenship Clause is far from settled.
