WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he is asking for a rehearing of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to validate automatic U.S. citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants born on American soil, citing the spread of “birth tourism” advertisements aimed at exploiting the decision.

Enacted after the Civil War to extend constitutional protections to former slaves, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” For years, scholars and activists have disagreed as to whether its language applies to children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country illegally, which for decades has been the operative legal understanding, significantly complicating immigration enforcement and deportation efforts.

Immediately upon returning to office in January 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing federal departments and agencies to reject this interpretation and refuse to recognize citizenship “when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth”; or “when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”

The move was challenged, and at the end of last month, the nation’s highest court ruled that “children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States,” according to Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion, “are citizens at birth.” Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented, with Alito arguing that the 14th Amendment “confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country.”

Since the ruling, images began to spread across social media of a Spanish-language billboard in Texas advertising travel assistance to give birth at Mission Regional Medical Center (MRMC) in Texas, thereby guaranteeing American citizenship.

“Birth tourism is an illegal practice,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott declared in launching an investigation of MRMC, which insists it “does not support or facilitate any unlawful activity” and has pulled offending marketing materials “due to any unintended misunderstanding.” But the president says the situation demands more dramatic action.

“Billions of Dollars will be illegally made by this SCAM, with Citizenship going to anyone willing to pay. It will be, by far, the number one way of becoming a citizen, and then the entire family will be allowed to follow. Not sustainable,” Trump declared on Truth Social. “NOBODY SAW THIS COMING!!! AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP IS NOT FOR SALE! In fact, that is a crime, and therefore, the Supreme Court’s ruling is wrong. I will be asking for a Rehearing by the United States Supreme Court, IMMEDIATELY. This miscarriage of justice will destroy America if they don’t change their absolutely insane decision.”

Supreme Court Rule 44 allows petitioners to file for a rehearing on the merits within 25 days. But such petitions “will not be granted except by a majority of the Court, at the instance of a Justice who concurred in the judgment or decision,” making it extremely unlikely.

“The last time the justices opted to rehear a case they previously decided was in 1965, and that was to address a technical issue, not to issue a full reversal,” the New York Post notes. “The Supreme Court has only reversed a merits ruling once, in 1956’s Reid v. Covert. In that case, the justices initially ruled that American civilians accused of crimes on overseas US military bases could be tried via court-martial before finding the following year that they could not.”

National Review legal expert and former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy has argued that the 14th Amendment does not mandate birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, arguing, “There was no federal concept of ‘illegal alien’ at the time” because “deciding which non-Americans would be permitted in their territories” was understood to be the purview of the states, and the Amendment’s “subject to the jurisdiction” language was meant to denote whether or not someone was lawfully the subject of a foreign power.

“Congress’s objective was to deal with a unique historical problem — the status of black people who had been in America for generations, bore allegiance to its sovereign power and the burdens of its laws, but were being denied citizenship and its attributes,” McCarthy explains. “The amendment was designed to bring blacks formally into the American fold without purporting to affect the status of others who were regarded as non-Americans because they actually were non-Americans — foreign diplomats and their families, Indian tribes, and aliens who had not been naturalized.”

Regardless, as a practical matter birthright citizenship is here to stay until the decision is either reversed by a future court or superseded by a constitutional amendment.

As for the current Supreme Court, it is often unpredictable on conservative and pro-family goals, despite six of its nine current members having been appointed by the GOP, including three by Trump alone.

The Court has delivered major conservative victories on gun rights, environmental regulation, affirmative action, and, most significantly, abortion with the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but it has also issued dismissive rulings on COVID-19 shot mandates, religious freedom, and LGBT ideology to the point that Alito has taken the rare step of criticizing Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh for lacking the “fortitude” to resolve such issues.

Share