These Justices Are Not Impartial
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- Trump v. Barbara was decided 6-3 against Trump's executive order, yet only five justices ruled birthright citizenship is constitutionally required, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining on statutory grounds via the 1940 Nationality Act rather than the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett were the only Republican-appointed justices to accept the plain text of the Citizenship Clause; the other four GOP appointees drafted alternative theories to narrow birthright citizenship without fully endorsing Trump's position.
- Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, argued the amendment was intended to benefit only the newly emancipated and latched onto the word "domiciled," which does not appear in the Constitution; Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson countered that the words of the formerly enslaved themselves refute that reading.
- Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissent willing to give Trump everything, devoting most of his opinion to illegal-immigration policy arguments rather than constitutional text, including a digression listing countries where undocumented immigrants originate.
- Georgetown law professor Aderson Francois warned the thin majority hands conservatives "a new bloody shirt to wave in every single political campaign," predicting the decision will become "the new Roe v. Wade" with conservatives now knowing they are one vote from overturning it.
- The ruling draws a pointed contrast with United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), when a 6-2 Court in an era of Jim Crow and the lynching epidemic nonetheless affirmed citizenship for a Chinese American man born in San Francisco, finding the Citizenship Clause's references to "jurisdiction" excluded only children of invading enemies and foreign diplomats.
Why it matters: With four Republican-appointed justices signaling openness to narrowing birthright citizenship, the constitutional guarantee now rests on a single vote — the precise configuration that preceded the Dobbs reversal of Roe v. Wade. Conservatives gain a litigation roadmap and a campaign issue, while the 14th Amendment's text becomes functionally contestable despite 130 years of precedent.
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