WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justices from across the ideological spectrum pummeled a lawyer for the Trump administration with biting questions during oral arguments Wednesday over the president’s executive order on birthright citizenship.
While it wasn’t fully clear which way the high court will go in the landmark case, Republican-appointed justices made clear they were far from a lock for the administration — all while President Trump was in the room in a historical first.
“You obviously put a lot of weight on ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ But the examples you give to support that strike me as very quirky,” Chief Justice John Roberts asked US Solicitor General John Sauer early on.
Roberts, seen as a crucial swing vote, is often one of the more reserved justices, who typically asks just a few questions, though it varies from case to case.
In that instance, he was uneasy with Sauer’s arguments about what the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means in the 14th Amendment and elsewhere.
Sauer had zeroed in on that language in his briefs to argue that illegal immigrants aren’t subject to the jurisdiction of the US, therefore their children aren’t guaranteed birthright citizenship. Sauer pointed to exceptions in the existing birthright citizenship policy, such as foreign invaders, in his briefs.
“You know, children, of ambassadors, children of enemies during a hostile invasion, children on warships. And then you expand it to the whole class of illegal aliens who are here in the country,” Roberts went on. “I’m not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples.”
Trump’s executive order, signed on Jan. 20, 2025, his first day back in the White House, attempts to eliminate birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and temporary visitors to the US.
That order has been blocked by the lower courts, which universally ruled against him on the matter.
Later, Roberts asked Sauer about how common so-called birth tourism is in the US, seizing on a key aspect of the Trump administration’s justification for the executive order.
“We’re in a new world now,” Sauer said, suggesting the framers of the 14th Amendment didn’t have to deal with that at the time.
It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution,” Roberts shot back.
