--- title: Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Birthright Citizenship Case description: Justice Sonya Sotomayor and others pushed back against Solicitor General John Sauer, who argued for Trump against national injunctions. canonical: https://time.com/7285669/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-injunctoins-sauer/ author: Nik Popli article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-05-15T16:10:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2025-05-16T17:07:35.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Birthright Citizenship Case og:description: The Justices on the Supreme Court wrestled on Thursday with a high-stakes case involving birthright citizenship that’s poised to shape both the Trump Administration’s immigration policy and its attempts to expand presidential power. og:url: https://time.com/7285669/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-injunctoins-sauer/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba0905ad5e44193b/6998c69f1500fb8bfbaa6415/GettyImages-2214584503.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: US-POLITICS-JUSTICE-TRUMP-CITIZENSHIP-PROTEST og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Birthright Citizenship Case twitter:description: The Justices on the Supreme Court wrestled on Thursday with a high-stakes case involving birthright citizenship that’s poised to shape both the Trump Administration’s immigration policy and its attempts to expand presidential power. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba0905ad5e44193b/6998c69f1500fb8bfbaa6415/GettyImages-2214584503.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts' Power > Sponsored content. 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Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/), [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/) and [Rebecca Schneid](https://time.com/author/rebecca-schneid/) Updated: May 16, 2025 5:07 PM UTCPublished: May 15, 2025 4:10 PM UTC  Olga Urbina and her 9-month-old son Ares Webster participate in a protest outside the Supreme Court on the morning Justices were hearing a case involving President Donald Trump's move to end birthright citizenship in Washington, DC, on May 15, 2025. Olga Urbina and her 9-month-old son Ares Webster participate in a protest outside the Supreme Court on the morning Justices were hearing a case involving President Donald Trump's move to end birthright citizenship in Washington, DC, on May 15, 2025.Drew Angerer—AFP via Getty Images by [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/), [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/) and [Rebecca Schneid](https://time.com/author/rebecca-schneid/) Updated: May 16, 2025 5:07 PM UTCPublished: May 15, 2025 4:10 PM UTC President Donald Trump’s [executive order](https://time.com/7208965/birthright-citizenship-trump-order/) purporting to end birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment found little support during more than two hours of oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Thursday. Not one Justice defended the legality of his push to end automatic citizenship for the U.S.-born children of non-citizens, which lower courts have found to be unconstitutional. But the case was not directly about the order itself, as the Court was considering the Trump Administration's complaint that federal judges in lower courts had overstepped their authority by issuing injunctions that blocked enforcement of the order nationwide as lawsuits traveled up the court system. On that point, some of the Justices appeared open to the Administration’s arguments. The intricate case marked a high-stakes test of both the ability of judges to restrict the executive branch as well as the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, which has stood for more than 125 years. **Read more**: [_Hundreds Outside Supreme Court Call on Justices to Protect Birthright Citizenship_](https://time.com/7285742/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-protest/) Solicitor General John Sauer argued on behalf of the Trump Administration that nationwide injunctions are unconstitutional and that the lower counts should have only been able to block Trump’s order in relation to those who had filed lawsuits. He said only the Supreme Court could rule on the constitutionality of the executive order for the entire country. Sauer told the court that federal judges have issued 40 nationwide injunctions since the start of Trump's second term, and that 35 have come from the same five judicial districts. The conservative Justices expressed concern with how often district judges issue nationwide injunctions against federal policies, and sounded inclined to find ways to replace nationwide injunctions with other legal tools—like class-action lawsuits, which allow individuals to serve as representatives of a much larger group of similarly situated people. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump, pressed Sauer on why class-action lawsuits would not offer the same practical benefits as nationwide injunctions, appearing to suggest that certifying a class action would be a more appropriate vehicle for challengers to Trump’s executive order to get broad relief from the courts while litigation continued—echoing an argument that Sauer made earlier. But the three liberal Justices on the court—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson—grilled Sauer over how rolling back nationwide injunctions would work in practice: “If you win this challenge and say there is no nationwide injunction,” Kagan said, “then I can’t see how an individual who is not being treated equitably would have any ability to bring the substantive question to us.” Justice Sotomayor argued that allowing an executive order as wide-reaching as Trump’s order on birthright citizenship to go into effect for parts of the country but not others was unreasonable, as was waiting for the Supreme Court to resolve such issues. She posited the hypothetical of a President confiscating Americans’ guns en masse—"clearly, indisputably unconstitutional act.” "When a new president orders that because there's so much gun violence going on in the country, and he comes in and he says, 'I have the right to take away the guns from everyone,' and he sends out the military to seize everyone's guns. We and the courts have to sit back and wait until every name plaintiff gets or every plaintiff whose gun is taken comes into court?" she asked. Jackson went on to press Sauer over whether every individual affected by a federal action would need to file their own lawsuit if universal injunctions were removed, summarizing the Trump Administration’s argument as a “catch me if you can kind of regime.” Sauer insisted that national injunctions were not the right mechanism for challenging Presidential orders like the one at issue in the case. It’s unclear how the high court will resolve the issue, though Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh all signaled at certain points that they might potentially side with Trump. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump-appointee who has emerged as a key swing vote in several cases involving the Administration, appeared open to siding with the liberal Justices. At one point, she pressed Sauer on why the government wasn’t at the Supreme Court arguing the birthright citizenship issue on its merits, to which Sauer said the merits are “novel” and “sensitive constitutional issues.” “So this one isn’t clear cut on the merits?” Barrett asked. Multiple courts have found Trump’s executive order is in violation of the doctrine of birthright citizenship guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, as well as more than 120 years of court precedent set by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1898 ruling [_United States v. Wong Kim Ark._](https://time.com/7204970/birthright-citizenship-test-cases/)Sotomayor said during the arguments that Trump’s order, at her count, violates four Supreme Court precedents. Later, after Kagan brought up the Trump Administration’s disputes with federal judges who ordered the injunctions in lower courts, Barrett asked Sauer whether the Trump Administration believes it needs to follow all federal court decisions. “You resisted Justice Kagan when she asked you whether the government would obey within the 2nd Circuit a precedent,” Barrett said, to which Sauer replied that Trump "generally" tries to respect federal court decisions but not necessarily in every case, such as those where the government was trying to get an appeals decision overruled. “General practice is to respect those precedents, but there are circumstances when it is not a categorical practice, and that is not just a new policy,” Sauer said. Outside the Supreme Court, [hundreds gathered](https://time.com/7285742/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-protest/??) to oppose Trump's birthright citizenship order. Some chanted "Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here" and "Si se puede." At one point, the crowd sang together a rendition of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." Rep. Nancy Pelosi, standing in front of the court’s steps, read aloud the text of the 14th Amendment. The crowd cheered as the former Speaker of the House read, “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” and that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Though Trump’s birthright citizenship order is at the center of the Supreme Court case, the Justices may ultimately rule only on the issue of how federal courts are able to limit executive power through nationwide injunctions. Such a decision is likely to have far-reaching implications for Trump’s presidency, as he pushes to expand executive power and the courts try to make sense of that. Multiple Justices argued against the feasibility of ending nationwide injunctions. Justice Kagan offered a hypothetical in which the government keeps losing at the lower courts on individual cases. Why, she asked, would an Administration ever appeal to the Supreme Court and risk a ruling against them, if they no longer have to worry about nationwide injunctions? At the same time, conservative Justices gave Sauer some refuge. Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the country “survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions.” Justice Kavanaugh said that there were times that the Supreme Court had been able to move quickly on high-profile, high-consequence cases, pointing to the TikTok case the [Supreme Court took up in a matter of weeks earlier this year.](https://time.com/7205609/supreme-court-tiktok-arguments-ban/) Though the Court mostly focused on nationwide injunctions, the Justices did touch on the constitutionality of Trump’s birthright citizenship order. Sauer argued that the 14th Amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship, was meant for freed slaves, not immigrants to the United States. Justice Sotomayor disputed that, and noted that, absent a nationwide injunction, Trump’s order could leave thousands of newborns “stateless”—not citizens in the U.S. and potentially not granted citizenship by the the countries their parents are from, as some require someone to be born on their soil to be granted citizenship. She pointed out that many lower courts had found that Trump's order violates “not only precedent, but the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment.” New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum argued on behalf of Democratic-led states challenging the executive order. He urged the Justices to consider the impracticality of striking down the national injunctions, creating a situation in which some states allow birthright citizenship, while others prohibit it. Feigenbaum acknowledged “practical concerns” over district courts impacting policy around the country, and agreed that nationwide injunctions should be used only sparingly. He said the Supreme Court could help outline when such injunctions were appropriate. The third and last lawyer was Kelsi Corkran, who represented individual families who are facing the loss of birthright citizenship, as well as immigrant advocacy groups. Justice Kavanaugh suggested that those who wished to challenge the order might not need nationwide injunction in order to present their case. They could work together and submit class-action lawsuits against the government. Corkran argued, though, that this was not “workable” and would put the prospective plaintiffs in danger. “It would require the association members to identify and disclose to the government the association that puts them at great risk of adverse consequences, detention or deportation, even if they're here lawfully,” Corkran said. “And so it's not complete relief to require the plaintiffs to make dangerous disclosures in order to claim the constitutional right.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7285669/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-injunctoins-sauer/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7285669/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-injunctoins-sauer/"},"headline":"Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts' Power","datePublished":"2025-05-15T16:10:47.000Z","dateModified":"2025-05-16T17:07:35.000Z","description":"The case centers on President Trump's attempt to undo birthright citizenship","url":"https://time.com/7285669/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-injunctoins-sauer/","keywords":["Supreme Court"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba0905ad5e44193b/6998c69f1500fb8bfbaa6415/GettyImages-2214584503.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nik Popli","jobTitle":"Staff Writer","url":"https://time.com/author/nik-popli/"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Bennett","jobTitle":"Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Rebecca Schneid","jobTitle":"Reporter","url":"https://time.com/author/rebecca-schneid/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba0905ad5e44193b/6998c69f1500fb8bfbaa6415/GettyImages-2214584503.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"US-POLITICS-JUSTICE-TRUMP-CITIZENSHIP-PROTEST","caption":"US-POLITICS-JUSTICE-TRUMP-CITIZENSHIP-PROTEST","creditText":"Drew Angerer—AFP via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/supreme-court/","name":"Supreme Court"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7285669/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-injunctoins-sauer/","name":"Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts' Power"}}]}] ```