Trump signs new executive orders in fresh attempt to change birthright citizenship law. So what happens now?
President Trump has issued two executive orders targeting birthright citizenship, a decision that places him in direct conflict with established Supreme Court precedent.
Trump touted the decrees on Thursday, with the first targeting birthright citizenship. The order is aimed at denying birthright citizenship to the children of some foreign diplomatic staff in the United States.
The order also applies to U.S. territories.
A related concern centers on “birth tourism,” a practice where individuals who are not U.S. citizens travel to the country specifically to give birth, thereby securing American citizenship for their offspring.
However, Trump’s executive orders come just months after the Supreme Court struck down his attempt to block automatic birthright citizenship to babies born in the U.S. if their mother was “unlawfully present” or had “lawful or temporary status,” and their father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the birth.
How will Trump’s new executive orders interact with the Supreme Court ruling?
Trump described the Supreme Court ruling as “very unfair” as he signed the new executive orders in the Oval Office.
Previously, Trump has hit out at the highest court in the U.S., claiming that rulings over birthright citizenship and his tariff policy had cost the country “TRILLIONS AND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS!”
Trump immediately drew criticism over his latest executive orders, with California Governor Gavin Newsom posting the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause on X in response.
In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described the president’s efforts to reinterpret birthright citizenship as “blatantly illegal” and warned that the president had “set himself up for yet another loss in the courts.”
A spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union, which previously sued to block Trump’s other birthright citizenship order, posted on Facebook that the Supreme Court had “already decided this issue.”
“Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution,” the spokesperson continued. “Any executive order that tries to attack birthright citizenship will meet the same fate as President Trump’s last one.”
In June, the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s attempt to redefine the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause.
The clause states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
The Supreme Court has upheld that definition for over 100 years, applying it to all children in the United States. Congress codified it into law in 1952.
Trump had tried to redefine that understanding via executive order, only to be ruled against in a 6-3 vote.
In the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts determined that children whose parents are “unlawfully or temporarily present” are subjected to U.S. jurisdiction and will receive U.S. citizenship.
“If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design,” Roberts wrote, noting that there was “scant evidence” for the Trump administration’s “dramatically revisionist view.”
Why was birthright citizenship established?
The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, following the end of the Civil War.
The amendment was designed to guarantee certain rights to all African American people living in U.S. states, according to the American Immigration Council.
The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment rectified an 1857 ruling that did not extend citizenship to African Americans. However, it was only in 1898 that the Fourteenth Amendment was formally interpreted to mean that children born in the U.S. would receive automatic birthright citizenship.
