Supreme Court arguments looked weak for Trump

The surprise in the courtroom on April 1 was not that liberal justices pushed back on Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order. It was that several conservative justices also sounded uneasy with the government’s theory in Trump v. Barbara after more than two hours of argument. (scotusblog.com) Trump’s order, signed on January 20, 2025 as Executive Order 14,160, says some children born in the United States would not count as citizens if their parents were in the country unlawfully or only temporarily. The case now before the court asks whether a president can narrow citizenship that way without changing the Constitution or federal statute. (whitehouse.gov) (oyez.org) The text at the center of the fight is 27 words from the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868: people born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. For more than a century, that line has been read to cover almost everyone born on American soil except children of diplomats and invading armies. (constitution.congress.gov) (brennancenter.org) The modern Supreme Court case behind that reading is United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898. The court held that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen at birth, even though his parents were foreign nationals and not eligible for naturalization under the laws of that era. (constitutioncenter.org) That old precedent is why Trump’s lawyers faced a steep climb on April 1. Every lower court to consider the order had already blocked it before the justices heard argument. (scotusblog.com) The administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, argued that “subject to the jurisdiction” should turn on the parents’ allegiance and permanent home, not just the child’s place of birth. The challengers, represented by American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Cecillia Wang, argued that the government was trying to rewrite settled law with a new definition no court has accepted. (scotusblog.com) The justices did not just ask whether Trump’s order was legal. They also pressed the government on what would happen if a president could change citizenship rules by executive order and then force families to sue one by one for passports, Social Security numbers, or Medicaid coverage. (oyez.org) (scotusblog.com) Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh were among the most active questioners, and SCOTUSblog’s transcript analysis found the bench spoke 9,454 words, more than either advocate. That matters in Supreme Court arguments because heavy judicial questioning usually means the justices are testing limits, not just letting a lawyer tell a clean story. (scotusblog.com) Trump also turned the hearing into a political spectacle by attending in person on April 1, becoming the first sitting president known to do that for a Supreme Court oral argument. He left shortly after Sauer finished, before Wang’s presentation was over. (reuters.com) (scotusblog.com) The narrow legal issue could still get messy because the administration also asked the court to curb nationwide injunctions, which are orders that block a policy everywhere at once. Even if the justices reject Trump’s citizenship theory, they could still use this case to make it harder for a single district judge to freeze a presidential policy across all 50 states. (scotusblog.com) So the hearing looked weak for Trump in the most important way: his core argument on citizenship appeared to run into resistance from across the bench, including judges he would normally hope to win over. The remaining question is whether the court writes a broad opinion defending birthright citizenship, a narrower opinion focused on injunctions, or both. (scotusblog.com)