WASHINGTON — Millions of Americans born in the U.S. to immigrants breathed sighs of relief while top Republicans in Washington fumed Tuesday after the Supreme Court struck down a presidential order to ban birthright citizenship, a legal protection for those who drew their first breaths within the nation’s borders.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court rejected an executive order that President Donald Trump signed on the first day of his second term to narrow sharply the definition of birthright citizenship. The president on Tuesday said the ruling, in Trump v. Barbara, was “too bad for our country.” He urged Congress to end the policy via legislation rather than a constitutional amendment.
Speaker Mike Johnson, a constitutional lawyer and the Republican who leads the House of Representatives, said “birthing tourism” is a trend.
“It’s been abused,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday of birthright citizenship protection. “I’m very disappointed in that outcome.”
New Jersey was a leading plaintiff in the fight to maintain the practice. The state also was the main plaintiff in a related federal immigration case. Democrats within the state’s congressional delegation, including Rep. Rob Menendez (D-8th), signed on to briefs in support of the action against the Trump administration.
14th Amendment
Trump’s order violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the court ruled. “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to participate in our political community,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’”
Roberts and other justices appeared skeptical of the government’s case at oral arguments in April.
“Birthright citizenship is a foundational constitutional guarantee that has shaped our nation for more than 150 years,” New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, said in a statement after the ruling. “Donald Trump’s malicious attempt to tear down this guarantee was so plainly unlawful and reckless that his own handpicked Supreme Court said ‘no.’”
Trump nominated two of the justices who voted in the majority, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
The case carried potential for a seismic ruling: A decision in Trump’s favor would have immediately created a separate class of onetime U.S. citizens with no right to live here.
An end to birthright citizenship would trigger “chaos on the ground, and I’m confident that we’re going to prevail,” Matt Platkin, the former New Jersey attorney general, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News last year. “For people in South Jersey who give birth in Philadelphia, which many people do, the citizenship of your child would turn on whether you go to a hospital in South Jersey or Philadelphia.”
Economic power
About 25% of New Jerseyans are foreign-born, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, making the state second only to California, where about 28% are immigrants.
Immigrants in 2023 made up 30% of New Jersey’s workforce, with jobs as software developers, registered nurses, management analysts, laborers, construction workers, janitors and more, according to the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University. They represented 36% of entrepreneurs, the data show.
In 2022, immigrants contributed $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes nationally, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan, nonprofit research group. New Jersey was among five states that collected more than $1 billion in such taxes, its study found.
Roughly 500,000 people who lack immigration paperwork live in New Jersey. In March, Sherrill signed legislation to restrict state and local police involvement with federal agents who would detain them. In June she announced $20 million in state funding for legal representation for those at risk of deportation.
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport noted that states started to plan a challenge in 2024, when Trump promised such a directive on the campaign trail. In all, 23 states joined the litigation, Davenport said.
“The enormous victory and the fact the executive order never went into effect is the result of tremendous work by advocates and the dedicated public servants at state attorneys general offices across our country,” she said during a streaming news conference with her colleagues from Massachusetts, California and Connecticut.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong swatted at a message Trump posted online Tuesday that implored Congress “should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support!”
“It’s over. Go home, Donald Trump,” said Tong, who was born in the U.S. to parents who were from China and Taiwan. “Don’t come back to the court again and cause trouble by sitting in the front row and making a spectacle of yourself.”
‘Remain vigilant’
Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the national “guarantee of birthright citizenship stands strong.” Wang herself is a beneficiary of birthright citizenship. “Our brave clients and our legal team stand with millions of people around our country who spoke up for one of our most cherished rights,” said Wang, who argued the case in April for the plaintiffs.
“This president will continue his assault on immigrant communities and the Constitution, and we must remain vigilant and use this victory as a call to action to continue organizing,” said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center. “The 14th Amendment is clear and definitive, and this decision should never have been this close.”
Among the dissenters was Justice Samuel Alito, who was born in Trenton, grew up in Hamilton and graduated from Princeton University. Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas joined Alito.
Many people born in the U.S. to “illegal immigrants,” Alito wrote, “incur duties to that country. This means that they are ‘subject to a foreign power’ and are thus not ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The majority decision was a “serious mistake,” he wrote.
“I’m grateful the majority agreed to uphold the Constitution [Tuesday] morning, and that the law of the land remains that if you are born in America, you are an American,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ), the son of Korean immigrants, said in a statement to NJ Spotlight News.
“Being an American is a right guaranteed and enshrined by our Constitution, defended on the battlefield by countless sons and daughters of immigrants,” said Rep. Nellie Pou (D-9th),whose parents moved from Puerto Rico to the continental U.S. in the 1950s. “It is a promise rooted in who we are as a nation. This is a basic truth that no President can take away. Under the plain language in the Constitution, this right is permanent, it is powerful, and it is what keeps us free.”
