Fate of birthright citizenship order unresolved after Supreme Court limits nationwide injunctions

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday gave President Donald Trump a partial victory on one of his most far-reaching executive orders, ending birthright citizenship. The court's opinion limits so-called nationwide injunctions imposed by federal courts.

"Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them," Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. "When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too."

But a conservative majority left open the possibility that the birthright citizenship changes could remain blocked nationwide. Trump’s order would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of people who are in the country illegally.

Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in the court's dissenting opinion, wrote that Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order has been deemed “patently unconstitutional” by every court that examined it.

So, instead of trying to argue that the executive order is likely constitutional, the administration “asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone,” Sotomayor wrote.

“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it,” she wrote. “Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along.”

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the ruling on social media.

“Today, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump,” she said in a post on the social platform X shortly after the ruling came down.

Bondi said the Justice Department “will continue to zealously defend” Trump’s “policies and his authority to implement them.”

Universal injunctions have been a source of intense frustration for the Trump administration amid a barrage of legal challenges to his priorities around immigration and other matters.

Sid Miller, Texas' commissioner of agriculture, in a statement celebrated the ending of nationwide injunctions, but stopped short of mentioning the issue birthright citizenship.

"For too long, partisan judges, particularly those with a far-left agenda, have wielded universal injunctions as a political weapon to unilaterally halt lawful executive actions they personally disagreed with," he said. "This ruling rightly reins in that abuse and restores the right to make policy to the elected branches of government."

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said he is concerned that the Supreme Court ruling could have “far-reaching” implications that would allow the Trump administration to implement unconstitutional policies.“Birthright citizenship was established through the 14th Amendment at the end of the Civil War to overturn the reprehensible Dred Scott decision that denied citizenship to enslaved African Americans born in the United States. If Donald Trump is allowed to undermine this fundamental American principle, I fear millions of children will be born without any citizenship.”

Immigrant rights groups and immigrants suing the administration were disappointed in the court's ruling.

“This decision is devastating for U.S. families who are not protected by the limited injunction the Supreme Court left in place,” said a pregnant Venezuelan asylum-seeker only identified as Monica in the lawsuit against the Trump administration. "Hundreds of thousands of other U.S.-born children are in danger of not receiving U.S. citizenship. I know that every pregnant mother cannot file a lawsuit to make sure their children have U.S. citizenship — that is why I filed this lawsuit to not only protect my child’s rights, but the constitutional rights of all U.S.-born children of immigrants.”

Lupe M. Rodríguez, executive director for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, a New York City-based organization with offices in Texas, said this ruling will confuse a lot of parents.

“We are deeply alarmed by the Supreme Court’s decision today," Rodríguez said. "By lifting the injunction on this cruel and unconstitutional executive order, there will be chaos and confusion for families across the country as citizenship may depend on the state you were born in. This opens the door to discrimination, statelessness, and a fundamental erosion of rights for those born on American soil."

Juan Proaño, chief executive officer at the League of United Latin American Citizens, an advocacy group with offices across Texas, said he was disappointed to see the ruling. He said it could lead to more litigation cases flooding the nation's lower courts.

"(The ruling) is just going to really jam up the legal system because it's going to have to deal with these cases on a one-off basis, when the fact of the matter is that we know [Trump's order] is unconstitutional," Proaño said. "We really feel like the Supreme Court has turned its back on a fundamental American principle," he said.

Michelle Lapointe, legal director for the American Immigration Council, noted Trump's executive order would still not take effect for 30 days and the court suggested that opponents to the order could file a class action lawsuit to have a similar effect as a nationwide injunction. CASA, the plaintiff in the case, has already amended the complaint to seek class certification.

But if the order ending birthright citizenship in some states were to go into effect, Lapointe said all bets would be off.

"We'll have a situation like what we had in the years leading up to the Civil War and the years immediately after the Civil War where your constitutional rights and your rights as a citizen depend on which state you're born in, and that is precisely the reason the 14th Amendment was ratified," she said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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