WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on President Donald Trump’s effort to end the long-standing practice of granting citizenship to people born in the United States.
Hundreds of protesters, many from civil rights and immigration advocacy groups, gathered in front of the country’s highest court during the hearing, where opposing lawyers argued that the Trump administration’s plan, outlined in an executive order signed on January 20, 2025, violates the U.S. Constitution and subsequent federal law.
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By contrast, Trump administration lawyers argued that infants born to undocumented parents living in the United States or with “temporary” legal status should not be granted citizenship, arguing that more than 100 years of U.S. practice was based on a “misreading” of the U.S. Constitution.
The importance of the case to an administration that has pursued tough deportation and immigration policies was underscored by the appearance of US President Donald Trump at Wednesday’s hearing. Trump became the first sitting president in U.S. history to attend oral arguments before the Supreme Court.
“This is very close,” said Luis Villaguzman, 21, a student fellow with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) from Riverside, California, who was among those gathered outside the courtroom. “Especially when it comes to immigrants…mothers who are pregnant and expecting…they lose benefits and they really just lose hope, the future of America.”
He characterized President Trump’s unprecedented appearance at the Supreme Court as a “show of force” meant to sway the justices. The court currently has a 6-3 conservative majority, including three justices appointed by President Trump during his first term.
The commission has ruled in President Trump’s favor on several immigration decisions, but has handed the president some major defeats in recent weeks.
Roslyn Hsiao, 46, of Montclair, New Jersey, also believed that Trump’s appearance was “an attempt to sway the court in his favor.”
“That’s why people need to be here,” said Hsiao, holding a placard that read “If you were born here, you belong here.”
Trump, meanwhile, stood up midway through Wednesday’s hearing and abruptly left, writing on his Truth Social account shortly afterwards: “We are the only country in the world stupid enough to recognize ‘natural-born’ citizenship!”
At least 30 countries have similar practices regarding birthright citizenship as the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.
No demonstrations were organized Wednesday in support of President Trump’s actions, but law professor John Eastman, a longtime supporter of the theory, attended the hearing.
He told the New York Times that he was “impressed” by both sides’ arguments, adding that the hearing “proved that this is not a radical fringe idea.”
“Birthright citizenship means the children of illegal aliens can vote to tax their children and seize their inheritance,” Stephen Miller, an adviser who designed President Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, wrote in X magazine.
developed discussion
The Supreme Court was not scheduled to rule on the case until later this year. Still, Wednesday’s hearing provided an opportunity to see how the judge thinks about both sides’ arguments.
At the beginning of the proceedings, Attorney General John Sauer argued that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, has been misconstrued to mean that everyone born in the United States is automatically a U.S. citizen, regardless of the legal status of their parents.
The text reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and who are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are nationals of the United States and the state in which they reside.”
Sauer argued that “subject to jurisdiction” paves the way to eliminating birthright citizenship for some immigrant groups, and further argued that previous rulings show the amendment should apply only to people with “domiciled allegiance to the United States.”
He equated this status with legal permanent resident status in the United States.
Sauer also charged that current birthright citizenship standards “disrespect the irreplaceable and profound gift of American citizenship” and encourage individuals to travel to the United States to give birth.
Cecilia Wang, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, one of several groups challenging Trump’s executive order, argued in turn that the president’s efforts clearly violate the clear language of the amendment, which she argued was reaffirmed in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark and later codified in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
“That rule was enshrined in the 14th Amendment so that government officials could not override it,” she said.
She argued that the framers of the Constitution and subsequent Congresses would have included explicit language narrowing the scope of the amendment if they had intended to do so.
Wang also warned that the president’s order creates a bureaucratic nightmare while raising questions about the potential for changes in the criteria by which infants become citizens at birth.
“The civil rights of millions of Americans, past, present and future, could be called into question,” she said.
judge asks lawyer
The justices proceeded with several lines of questioning, most emphasizing Sauer’s argument that birthright citizenship applies only to those who have “loyalty” to the United States by virtue of their “residency.”
“Who has a domicile? We’re having a hard time figuring out who has a domicile,” said Justice Kentangi Brown Jackson, a liberal appointed by former President Joe Biden.
In a separate exchange with the ACLU’s Wang, conservative Justice Samuel Alito noted that the term “domicile” appears repeatedly in the Wong Kim Ark case, which has long been seen as an affirmation of birthright citizenship.
“Isn’t it at least a concern to say something like that, since this has been discussed 20 times and plays such an important role and you can dismiss it as irrelevant?” he asked.
Questioning Sauer, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, questioned why Congress had not included language in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that more clearly delineated which infants were automatically granted citizenship, if that was the intent.
“If Congress wanted to disagree with Mr. Wong Kim Ark about the scope of birthright citizenship and the scope of citizenship, you might have expected that they would use different language, but Congress is repeating the same language knowing what the interpretation was,” Kavanaugh said.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who was also appointed by President Trump, pointed to the chaos that President Trump’s executive order could create.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said: “I can imagine that some of the applications will be messy.”
she later asked. “What if I don’t know who my parents are?”
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by former President Barack Obama, also questioned how much disruption the order would cause.
She asked what would prevent the government’s position from being applied retroactively to current U.S. citizens if the court rules in the government’s favor.
“You asked us to focus solely on the prospectiveness of the executive order, but the logic of your position, if accepted, is that this president, the president-elect, Congress, or anyone else could decide that it should not be prospective,” she said.
Meanwhile, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, said the Trump administration has argued that illegal immigrants fall into a narrow group of individuals currently denied birthright citizenship, including only diplomats, foreign invading forces and children of Native American tribes.
He described the approach as “very unconventional.”
“I don’t really understand how you can get from such a small, kind of singular example to that large group.”
“Doesn’t abide by the constitution”
Back outside the courtroom, Deborah Fleischaker, senior immigration policy and strategy advisor for the Latino civil rights group UnidosUS, said, “The importance of today’s hearing cannot be underestimated.”
Trump’s order “will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of children every year, many of them Latinos,” she told Al Jazeera, while also saying that the U.S. birth registration system is largely decentralized, creating administrative “chaos.”
A joint analysis by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and the Pennsylvania Population Research Institute found that Trump’s executive order would affect approximately 255,000 infants born in the United States each year, claiming it would create a “persistent multigenerational underclass.”
“I connect this to (Trump’s) mass deportation campaign,” Fleischaker said. “To achieve its goal of deporting 1 million people a year, the Trump administration is trying to get people into the country illegally and then allow them to be deported.”
Among those who gathered at the counterprotest on Wednesday was Julia Ellergood Pfaff, a 63-year-old U.S. Army veteran.
“Securing our borders makes sense, but stripping people of their birthright citizenship…is not protecting our Constitution,” she said.
“And I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution.”
