The United States Supreme Court did an about-face in a historic decision related to Trump v CASA, Inc. This ruling will only embolden former President Donald Trump’s future ability to impose citizenship restrictions. The six-to-three majority did so with an emphatic ruling. This ruling gives Trump’s administration new power to set policies that undermine birthright citizenship. This ruling will especially benefit those states that until now had not been granted special judicial impediments to the imposition of such citizenship restrictions.
The court’s ruling comes on the heels of an executive order that Trump signed on his inauguration day. This order attempts to deprive children born on U.S. soil of their birthright citizenship if their parents lack legal immigration status. This move has been contentious, as it stands in opposition to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens. This ruling has the potential to drastically change our country’s understanding of birthright citizenship. As a result, we’re likely to see massive changes in what it means to enforce it.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the majority opinion, emphasizing serious concerns about how far the ruling’s implications reach. In her dissent, she described the decision as “an existential threat to the rule of law.” She argued that permitting the executive branch to sidestep constitutional protections for individuals who have not yet sued undermines the judiciary’s critical role.
“The court’s decision to permit the executive to violate the constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law. Given the critical role of the judiciary in maintaining the rule of law … it is odd, to say the least, that the court would grant the executive’s wish to be freed from the constraints of law by prohibiting district courts from ordering complete compliance with the constitution.” – Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion. It did so quite clearly by saying that the policy Trump had proposed would not take effect right away. Nonetheless, it did hold that nationwide injunctions against presidential orders should be restricted. Trump’s legal team argued that judges should only protect specific plaintiffs who sue, rather than issuing blanket rulings that impact entire populations.
This ruling marks a pivotal moment in U.S. legal history, as it reinforces a principle established since 1898, when the Supreme Court first recognized birthright citizenship in the case of Wong Kim Ark. The court’s ruling opens the door to important, but still unanswered, questions about the constitutionality of denying citizenship altogether to some American-born children. This fundamental issue has the potential to fuel more litigation in the coming years.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor denounced the ruling as “a travesty for the rule of law.” She expressed her fierce alarm, echoed by the other dissenting justices, at its destructive impact on our constitutional system and on individual rights.