Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship in blow to Trump

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:21)
Individuals who are born in this country are entitled to and protected by US citizenship through our Constitution.

**Ashley Lockwood** (0:32)
The Supreme Court rules in favor of birthright citizenship.
It's Tuesday, June 30th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Ashley Lockwood. Today on the show, having a hard time keeping up with all the news out of the Supreme Court? We got you. I have the skinny on more big decisions you may have missed. And we'll break down today's ruling that states do have the right to exclude transgender athletes from girls and women's sports teams.

**Orion Rummler** (1:12)
What it does do is give more ammunition to the 27 states that have already passed laws banning trans girls from girls' sports.

**Ashley Lockwood** (1:20)
But first, justices upheld the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship to most children born in the US. It's a major loss for President Trump, who tried to restrict that right on his very first day in office. Indira Lakshmanan and Scott Tong have two different reactions to this.
First, we hear from the ACLU, which argued the case against the administration. The group's executive director is Anthony Romero.

**Anthony Romero** (1:48)
We're always worried about an outcome on a case of this importance, which would have significance not just for hundreds of thousands of immigrants today, but for millions into the future.
But the work of good lawyers is to anticipate the questions and to bring either justices who are on the fence or hostile justices along. I'm particularly gratified that even in this very concerted Supreme Court, which has rendered other decisions that have been heartbreaks, that we won so definitively as we did, 6-3 by my count. We had five who argued, who agreed with us on the constitutional arguments, and then Justice Kavanaugh, who agreed with us on the statutory arguments. So all in, six of the Supreme Court justices thought that President Trump went too far and put the guardrails on him. And so it was a huge win for us, probably the most significant case we've had in our 106 year history.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:44)
Of the ACLU.
We'll get to the split in the ruling in a minute, but in his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the framers of the 14th Amendment extended citizenship to, quote, every freeborn person in this land. Let me ask though, does this ruling close off any future challenges to birthright citizenship?

**Anthony Romero** (3:04)
I mean, of course, Congress could try to pass a constitutional amendment.
Good luck to them. That's a lot of saber-rattling. I've seen the reports. I've seen the clips. You know, they'd have to bring a constitutional amendment. Having one on constitutional grounds, the only way they can undo it is by passing an amendment, a constitutional amendment. So the way you do that is two ways, right? Through Congress, you can propose an amendment. You get two-thirds of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, or by constitutional convention, two-thirds of the state legislatures. That's to get it proposed. Then to get it ratified, you need three-quarters of the state legislatures. So good luck to them. I'd love to see them waste their gas trying to do that. They'll never get it done.

**SPEAKER_7** (3:51)
Well, you say that, Anthony, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the majority on the grounds that the executive order was not a violation of the Constitution, but a violation of congressional law.
He argued essentially that Congress today could redefine categories to whom the 14th Amendment applies. And President Trump seemed to pick up on Kavanaugh's signal with the social media post in which he urged Congress to pass a law to end birthright citizenship and not bother with all the fuss around trying to create a new amendment to overturn the 14th. What do you think?

**Anthony Romero** (4:29)
That has the value of zero in terms of precedent. You had five justices, the majority of the court, who ruled on constitutional grounds. So the only way they can fix it, unless they get five other justices in the Supreme Court to overturn the decision today, the only way they can fix it is through a constitutional amendment.
So, I mean, lots of things get said in dissents that don't have legal precedents or legal value. There are lots of dissents that we cite to all the time. I wish that the words of Sonia Sotomayor were law. But in the end, they are only dissents. What stands is a five-majority ruling on constitutional grounds. And the only way they can undo birthright citizenship would be through a constitutional amendment.