On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that purportedly would end what is known as birthright citizenship, the concept that anyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen. That right is enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Just as a president does not have the authority to establish a national religion, or stay in office for a third term, the president does not have the authority to erase protections set forth in an amendment to the Constitution. To claim such authority is cynical at best, a sop to nativist elements on the right that should not survive legal challenge. But, in the meantime, millions of lives could be thrown into disarray with the president’s stroke of the pen, and perhaps that’s the point.
The notion of birthright citizenship was established as a principle of law in England in the 1600s and was enshrined in the U.S.’ “Second Founding,” the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution in the wake of the Civil War.
The president does not have the authority to erase protections set forth in an amendment to the Constitution.
The 14th Amendment, which guarantees to anyone born within the United States the rights and protections of citizenship, was a direct response to the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857. That decision became one of the many sparks that contributed to the Civil War. There, the court not only found unconstitutional any efforts by Congress to “compromise” around the spread of slavery to new U.S. territories and states; it also determined that enslaved persons, even ones who had resided in areas that prohibited slavery, did not enjoy the rights of citizens. The decision helped galvanize and harden public opinion around slavery, both among those who opposed it and those who supported it and wanted it to operate unfettered by federal law.
After the end of the war and during Reconstruction, Congress passed these amendments with the explicit purpose of ending slavery and involuntary servitude in all their forms. The 14th Amendment’s opening text provides 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.” Because of that language, the president cannot, with the stroke of a pen, rewrite the Constitution.
Nor can Congress. Indeed, roughly 30 years after passage of the 14th Amendment, Congress attempted to exclude from its protections individuals born in the U.S. who were the children of Chinese parents. But the Supreme Court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, found that any person born within the United States was entitled to benefit from the citizenship provisions of the 14th Amendment. The plain language of the amendment made that clear and the court endorsed that obvious position.
So what would it really take to rewrite the 14th Amendment? Well, another amendment, which would require not just a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress in favor of repeal of the 14th Amendment, but also ratification by three quarters of the states. Such events are highly unlikely. The Constitution is hard to amend, as it should be. And the notion that the president can sidestep that process is simply preposterous.
Now, that likely will not stop the president and those who wish to see the end of birthright citizenship as enshrined in the Constitution from trying. Indeed, it was a pillar of the Project 2025 playbook. That does not change the fact that the Constitution protects this path to citizenship and only an amendment to the Constitution can change it.
But that does not mean that the president’s effort to try to rewrite the Constitution with the stroke of a pen will not disrupt lives in the meantime. The cruelty of such a cynical move may be exactly what those who wish to end birthright citizenship wish to achieve.
The lives of real people will not be upended, and all for a cynical, cruel and unconstitutional joyride. But that may be the point.
Certainly, such a step would be met promptly by lawsuits challenging the action. In fact, a collection of 18 state attorneys general and some cities have already filed a suit against the order. Perhaps some judge, somewhere, will consider such an action permissible and refuse to prevent it from going into effect. Would it only prevent citizenship from being conferred on those born on U.S. soil in the future as the order purports to do? Could a judicial ruling approving the order invite the administration to seek to strip current citizens of their status?
But the Supreme Court — even this conservative court — will be hard-pressed to engage in down-is-up, up-is-down, Alice-in-Wonderland thinking: that the explicit words of the Constitution, as interpreted consistently for roughly a century-and-a-half, do not mean what they say.
Nevertheless, the president is seeking to end birthright citizenship; such action should be deemed contrary to the plain text of the Constitution. At the same time, lower court endorsement of the position might embolden even more aggressive steps by the administration, even if the Supreme Court should ultimately say the order is unconstitutional, which it should. That does not mean that, in the interim, the lives of real people will not be upended, and all for a cynical, cruel and unconstitutional joyride. But that may be the point.