President Donald Trump’s bid to end automatic birthright citizenship faced sharp skepticism from the US Supreme Court on Wednesday, with both liberal and conservative justices questioning whether the 14th Amendment could be reinterpreted to exclude children born in the United States to many immigrants.
During more than two hours of arguments, Solicitor General D. John Sauer defended the administration’s position that the framers of the amendment did not intend to grant citizenship to children of a wide range of legal and undocumented immigrants.
Chief Justice John Roberts challenged the argument, questioning how narrow historical exceptions to birthright citizenship could now be expanded to cover a much broader group of people.
Trump and Sauer argued the policy is meant to stop “birth tourism,” but Roberts doubted the framers of the 14th Amendment could have envisioned such a concept.
“We’re in a new world now,” Sauer said. Eight billion people, he added, “are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a US citizen.”
“Well, it’s a new world,” Roberts fired back. “It’s the same Constitution.”
Justice Elena Kagan accused the administration of relying on “pretty obscure sources” to support its claims, while Justice Neil Gorsuch questioned whether Trump’s interpretation of “domicile” would have made sense in the 19th century.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett also raised concerns about the administration’s theory that a parent’s allegiance should determine a child’s citizenship.
She asked how that logic would have applied to children of newly freed slaves, many of whose parents had been brought from Africa.
Sauer replied that “If you look at the 19th-century sources, what you see is that even though their entry may have been unlawful, 19th-century antebellum law never treated their presence as unlawful.”
Several conservative justices suggested the case could be decided without ruling directly on the Constitution. They pointed out that Congress later passed laws using the same citizenship language found in the 14th Amendment.
“If you’re in Congress in 1940 and 1952 and you want … to eliminate ambiguity, why do you repeat the same language rather than choosing something different,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked.
Sauer argued Congress was only establishing a “baseline” for birthright citizenship and not addressing every possible exception.
Lawyers challenging Trump’s order, including ACLU attorney Cecillia Wang, argued that birthright citizenship has long been understood to apply to nearly everyone born in the United States.
“Ask any American what our citizenship rule is and they’ll tell you, everyone born here is a citizen alike,” Wang said during her opening statement.
Still, justices questioned Wang over references to “domicile” in the landmark 1898 case US v. Wong Kim Ark.
“You dismiss the use of the word of ‘domicile,’” Roberts told Wang. “It appears in the opinion 20 different times.”
Gorsuch also noted that legal experts remained divided after the Wong Kim Ark ruling, describing the disagreement as a “mess.”
Trump also made history by attending the Supreme Court arguments in person, becoming the first sitting US president known to do so. He sat in the front row for about 75 minutes before leaving.
“We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” Trump posted on social media afterward.
The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its ruling by the end of June.
