The dust has now settled following the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara to strike down President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born to parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States. The Court affirmed that any child born on U.S. soil is a citizen at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
Trump has since announced that he will petition the High Court for a rehearing of the case, utilizing a rule that allows such requests within 25 days of a ruling. However, the chances that the Court will grant this rare request are slim. Securing a rehearing requires a majority vote from the nine justices – a threshold that is historically nearly impossible to meet given that the Court has not agreed to rehear a decided case in roughly 60 years.
The Court undoubtedly deserves plenty of criticism for its damaging and legally dubious decision, as Justice Clarence Thomas made clear in his blistering 91-page dissent. That said, given the stakes of continuing to grant anyone who is born on American soil full citizenship rights, anyone who cares about American sovereignty and restoring the sanctity of American citizenship must now focus on where to go from here.
In 2023, mothers who were unauthorized immigrants or held only temporary legal status accounted for 320,000 births in the United States, representing an astonishing nine percent of all U.S. births. If the restrictions of President Trump’s executive order had been properly upheld, roughly 260,000 of those children would not have qualified for automatic citizenship.
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