--- title: Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts’ Power | TIME description: The Supreme Court is hearing its first set of Trump-related arguments in the second Trump presidency. The case stems from the executive order President Donald Trump issued on his first day in office that would deny citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily. canonical: https://time.com/video/HOuXAll2/ og:title: Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts’ Power og:description: The Supreme Court is hearing its first set of Trump-related arguments in the second Trump presidency. The case stems from the executive order President Donald Trump issued on his first day in office that would deny citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily. og:url: https://time.com/video/HOuXAll2/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/HOuXAll2/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts’ Power twitter:description: The Supreme Court is hearing its first set of Trump-related arguments in the second Trump presidency. The case stems from the executive order President Donald Trump issued on his first day in office that would deny citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/HOuXAll2/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * Politics # Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts’ Power > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts’ Power [Watch (HLS stream): Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts’ Power](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/HOuXAll2.m3u8) (3:08)  _Published 2025-05-16. The Supreme Court is hearing its first set of Trump-related arguments in the second Trump presidency. The case stems from the executive order President Donald Trump issued on his first day in office that would deny citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily._ --- May 16, 2025 6:20 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Supreme Court Justices express skepticism of Trump's birthright citizenship challenge](/video/bZH3FJCA/) ### Supreme Court Justices express skepticism of Trump's birthright citizenship challenge [Demonstrators Gather Outside Supreme Court as Justices Consider Birthright Citizenship Arguments](/video/vA6a54uQ/) ### Demonstrators Gather Outside Supreme Court as Justices Consider Birthright Citizenship Arguments [Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Executive Order Ending Birthright Citizenship](/video/9dRRcDYq/) ### Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Executive Order Ending Birthright Citizenship --- ## Transcript On January 20th, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14 160 protecting the meaning and value of American citizenship. This order reflects the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens or temporary visitors. Multiple district courts promptly issued nationwide or universal injunctions blocking this order, and a cascade of such universal injunctions followed. Since January, 20th, district courts have now issued 40 universal injunctions against the federal government, including 35 from the same five judicial districts. This is a bipartisan problem that has now spanned the last five presidential administrations. Universal injunctions exceed the judicial power granted in article three, which exists only to redress the injury to the complaining party. They transgressed the traditional bounds of equitable authority, and they create a host of practical problems. I mean, that's a lot of words, and I don't have an answer for if one thinks and, you know, look, there are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions. But I think that the question that this case presents is that if one thinks that it's quite clear that the EO is illegal, how does one get to that result? In what time frame on your set of rules without the possibility of a nationwide injunction. On this case and on many similar cases? The appropriate way to do it is for there to be multiple lower courts considering it, the appropriate percolation that goes through the lower courts, and then ultimately this court decides the merits in a nationwide binding precedent. You have a complete inversion of that through the nationwide injunctions where the district. Are you really going to answer, Justice Kagan, by saying there's no way to do this expeditiously? Well, I refer to my further former answer as rule 23 provides the tools to do so. Multiple. But you resisted Justice Kagan when she said, could the individual plaintiffs form a class? We, uh, that has never been briefed in the court below? I do not concede that we wouldn't oppose class certification in this particular case. There may be arguments that this case is or is not appropriate for class certification. This court should deny the emergency application, because this injunction was properly designed to ensure that the states would get relief for our own. Article three injuries as we suffer significant pocketbook and sovereign harms from implementation of this executive order, including from the application of this EO to the 6000 babies born to new Jersey parents out of state every year, the U.S. prefers alternative approaches for granting that relief alternatives it never raised in the district court below, but its approach would require citizenship to vary based on the state in which you're born, or even turn on or off when someone crosses state lines, raising serious and unanswered administrability questions not just for the federal government, but also for the states. And it would offend the text and history of the citizenship clause itself. Since the 14th amendment, our country has never allowed American citizenship to vary based on the state in which someone resides. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Supreme Court Hears High-Stakes Case on Birthright Citizenship and Federal Courts’ Power","description":"The Supreme Court is hearing its first set of Trump-related arguments in the second Trump presidency. The case stems from the executive order President Donald Trump issued on his first day in office that would deny citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily. 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