Left-wing groups and activists are asking the Supreme Court to hand President Donald Trump another key loss when it hears a challenge to his birthright citizenship executive order in April.
The case Trump v. Barbara will have the justices evaluate the legality of Trump’s January 2025 executive order claiming that birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment does not extend to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are in the country illegally or on a temporary basis, such as on a visa. Trump’s order would require at least one of the parents to be either a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident at the time of birth for the newborn to receive automatic citizenship.
The class-action lawsuit against the executive order was taken up by the justices late last year and scheduled for oral arguments on April 1. Ahead of those arguments, left-wing groups have filed their own briefs asking the high court to maintain birthright citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil.
A coalition of Democrat-led states spearheaded by New Jersey filed a brief arguing Trump’s order violates the Immigration and Nationality Act and that the 14th Amendment’s language giving birthright citizenship to those “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States includes “virtually all U.S.-born babies.” The states also warn about harms to funding and other issues if the executive order is upheld by the Supreme Court.
“States and their subdivisions would also lose millions in federal funding (often for services they must provide regardless of federal reimbursement) and would incur onerous administrative burdens to implement the Order. And their residents would also suffer,” the brief reads.
“The Order thrusts infants into a new underclass, threatening their educational, economic, and health outcomes,” the brief continues. “While U.S.-born children have always been able to call the United States home, the Order would leave numerous U.S.-born children with no home country at all.”
Another brief, filed by a coalition of left-wing groups including the League of Women Voters and the NAACP, claimed the Supreme Court would “risk reviving” the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, a pre-Civil War Supreme Court ruling that stated black people were not U.S. citizens under federal law, if it sided with the Trump administration in this case. The Dred Scott decision was later overruled by the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments after the Civil War, which outlawed slavery, gave former slaves citizenship, and gave former slaves voting rights, respectively.
The brief claimed that if the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s executive order, it would be “creating a permanent underclass in this country and encouraging the race-based suppression of civil rights that the Reconstruction Amendments and subsequent Civil Rights legislation were enacted to eliminate.”
“The Reconstruction Congress enshrined birthright citizenship in the Constitution to place it beyond the reach of future political interference,” the brief reads. “This Court should honor that intent and strike down the Executive Order as unlawful and repugnant both to the Constitution and to this country’s proud, though imperfect, history of defending the civil rights of our most vulnerable citizens.”
Among the various briefs calling on the high court to uphold birthright citizenship for any child born on U.S. soil, except for the children of foreign diplomats, one filed by the American Bar Association warned that siding with the Trump administration “would unsettle the law in innumerable areas.”
The ABA bills itself as a nonpartisan group, but in recent years, Republicans and conservative legal analysts have accused the ABA of taking left-wing positions and exhibiting a clear bias against conservatives. The Trump administration announced last year it would end a decadeslong ABA arrangement of giving the group early access to possible federal judge nominees for vetting.
Another unusual brief came from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which argued that the idea of birthright citizenship is consistent with the Catholic Church’s “fundamental teaching regarding every human person’s inherent dignity” in its brief.
“While the Church recognizes the legitimate authority of sovereign nations to regulate immigration and secure their borders, the Church also teaches that this authority includes a corresponding duty to protect the God-given dignity of every human person,” the brief reads.
“By recognizing children as members of a particular political community, birthright citizenship acknowledges the intrinsic value of every human person,” the brief adds. “In this way, it embodies the Church’s teaching that public authorities must, to be morally legitimate, affirm and protect human dignity.”
Vatican City, the city-state that serves as the administrative capital for the Catholic Church, does not offer birthright citizenship. The Catholic Church has been largely at odds with the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration and other immigration policies since Trump returned to office last year.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett are Catholic. Of the remaining three justices, Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson are protestant Christians, and Justice Elena Kagan is Jewish.
TRUMP ALLIES URGE SUPREME COURT TO UPHOLD HIS BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP ORDER
The Trump administration has argued its executive order on birthright citizenship is constitutional, arguing the 14th Amendment’s provision about citizenship was designed to apply to former slaves and never was intended to include people in the country on a temporary or unlawful basis, including illegal immigrants.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the birthright citizenship case on April 1, with a ruling in Trump v. Barbara expected by the end of June.