The end of birthright citizenship as we know it?

President Trump has been on a crusade to end birthright citizenship for years. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant children are made automatic citizens every year because of this crazy policy. And now a political battle over whether virtually everyone born in the US should be granted citizenship is about to take center stage. We're going to end that because it's ridiculous. >> Through executive action? Well, if we can through executive action. Trump's executive order set in motion a flurry of lawsuits challenging his ability to make sweeping changes to birthright citizenship. [music] And now it's headed to the Supreme Court in a case called Trump v. Barbara. Getting rid of birthright citizenship for a significant group of people would be one of the most controversial and transformative items on Trump's agenda. It's also [music] blatantly unconstitutional. >> Trump cannot take away someone's citizenship, period. He certainly can't do it through an executive order. The Oval Office does not come with a magic eraser that allows the president to delete any constitutional [music] amendment that he doesn't like. >> With the stakes as high as they come, in this episode we're going to dive into why birthright citizenship is crucial to the foundation of modern America, the agenda behind the Trump v. Barbara case, and what might happen next. This is The Docket. Let's get started with a short history of birthright citizenship. By the way, we have an in-depth explainer on this, too. The 14th Amendment says that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. Remember those words, especially that jurisdiction part. They're essential to the Trump case. The 14th Amendment was passed to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves and their children, but it was clarified to apply to anybody born here with a few very specific exceptions. For well over a hundred years, birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution with this understanding. It has faced challenges and critics, but the legal consensus has remained the same. If you are born here, you are a US citizen. As anti-immigrant sentiment has grown, so have calls to dismantle birthright citizenship. Just because they come here illegal and they have a baby, that should not entitle them to actually be anchored here in the United States. We view this assault on birthright citizenship as a broader effort [music] to really try and remake the country and ultimately turn the clock back to a time when the country was less free and less equal. But since it's tied to the 14th Amendment, the Constitution would have to be changed to make it law. Trump can't do that by himself, [music] so he signed an executive order to try and chip away at this amendment. >> Trump's executive order carves out basically two groups of people who would be stripped of their citizenship. One is children of undocumented parents, and then the other is children of parents where like maybe the parents were in the country legally but on some sort of a temporary visa. >> After the order was signed, several lawsuits were filed and federal judges granted injunctions blocking the enforcement of the order. Every single court that has looked at this question has said that birthright citizenship is law, Trump's executive order is unconstitutional, you can't take people's citizenship away. This is where things get complicated and the real intention of the executive order comes into focus. The Trump administration is taking the long game when it comes to challenging these foundational features of citizenship law, like the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, with the hope that they will get a friendly audience in front of the US Supreme Court. >> Trump did force the issue by trying to take away people's citizenship and triggering a lawsuit over it. In a separate case in June of 2025 [music] called Trump v. Casa, the Supreme Court ruled that those universal injunctions from lower court judges had limitations. The Casa case dealt with the procedural challenges to Trump's executive order, but it still left an open question as to whether it complied with the 14th Amendment. This could create a lot of fear in immigrant communities, and that's what they're most concerned about is the ripple effect, the potential here, because no doubt the administration is going to see this as a win for them. >> Second way that Casa said that potentially you could still get the equivalent of a nationwide injunction [music] is if you had a class action, which is essentially where you have a lawsuit brought on behalf of all people who fit a particular description. [music] So, all people who would be subject to Trump's executive order is essentially the class that is in play. Barbara, which brings us to Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case in front of the Supreme Court. I wanted to take a second to thank our Patreon members. We're putting this episode of our Patreon exclusive series The Docket on YouTube. Videos like this one are only possible through the financial support of our members. And for a few dollars a month, you can get access to exclusive video reporting, new shows we're developing, and a chance to chat directly with our journalists. Reporting on important topics like this one take time, care, and real resources. Support from members gives us the independence to report on these kinds of urgent stories. Your membership allows us to produce journalism that is accurate, interesting, and fun to watch. And if you're not able to support financially right now, you can still follow us on Patreon for free to stay connected to our community and our reporting. Now, back to the video. Remember those critical lines in the 14th Amendment, subject to the jurisdiction thereof. In the Barbara [music] case, the government is basically arguing that we've been getting the meaning of those words wrong for over 100 years. The Trump administration claims that the law applies to those who are not just born in the United States, >> [music] >> but also owe allegiance to it. Except the words owe allegiance don't appear anywhere in the amendment. [music] The first line of the 14th Amendment is all persons born or naturalized in the United States. All persons born. So, like [music] under the text of the 14th Amendment, it doesn't matter what the allegiance of the parents are >> [music] >> because the amendment doesn't mention the parents. And it's not like when a baby is born, it declares allegiance to [music] one country or another. The fundamental thing to understand about Trump's argument is that he wants to pretend that the word jurisdiction means something else. The government is essentially asking the Supreme Court to reinterpret the 14th Amendment to achieve [music] their political goals, which will be a tough sell given how much legal precedent there is supporting birthright citizenship as it currently stands. Ultimately, what they have to be saying is, "Well, we'll just ignore what the words actually are, subject to the jurisdiction [music] in the Constitution, and instead we'll just make up an ad hoc rule that [music] matches our particular political preferences." The position of the plaintiffs in Trump v. Barbara is simple, leave birthright citizenship alone. If the court were to reinterpret the words [music] of the Constitution, it would open the door to all sorts of institutions as well as just people in everyday life questioning >> [music] >> the citizenship of their neighbors, of people they come across, of people they do [music] business with, and so forth. On top of that, it would result in a generation or more of stateless [music] people. You create a problem of having this underclass of people who immediately can claim a tie to any state. [music] The point of this executive order is to try and reshape [music] not just the electorate, but to reshape our shared understanding of what it means to be an American. The 14th Amendment granted rights and citizenship to enslaved people and their children, which then extended to carve a path for immigrants to attain the American dream. Well, birthright citizenship is the foundational doorway into participation in our democracy. It has encouraged generations of ambitious and highly skilled people to come to the United States with the dream of giving their children better lives. It's unlikely that the Supreme Court will side with Trump and suddenly decide to reinterpret the 14th Amendment given its long-standing legal consensus that birthright citizenship applies to anyone born in the United States. But that doesn't mean that the fight is over. >> The way that we lose birthright citizenship is the same way we lost the right to an abortion, [music] which is just that you keep electing presidents who don't support the right, and eventually they get enough justices on the Supreme Court that the right goes away. Whichever way the Supreme Court ends up ruling in Trump v. Barbara, Trump and his allies are likely going to keep trying to change [music] the rules on birthright citizenship however they can.