Trump, the first sitting president to attend US Supreme Court debates. What his order the judges discussed. “America is stupid”

In the presence of President Donald Trump, US Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism on Wednesday about the legality of his directive to restrict birthright citizenship in the US, part of his tough approach to immigration, which would overturn the long-held interpretation of a key constitutional provision, Reuters reports.

Trump, wearing a red tie and a dark suit, sat in the first row of the sumptuous courtroom, after arriving with the official column from the White House, reports News.ro. It was a historic visit to the highest judicial court in the US, being the first sitting president to attend hearings.

The Republican president then left the room midway through the meeting, shortly after the Justice Department lawyer, who pleaded in favor of his administration, finished his presentation.

A majority of the nine justices, both conservative and liberal, bombarded the lawyer with questions about the legal validity of Trump's executive order and its practical implications. The court has a conservative majority of 6 to 3.

The judges heard more than two hours of arguments in the administration's appeal against the decision of a lower court that blocked the directive.

Trump's order instructed US agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither parent is a US citizen or lawful permanent resident, meaning a “green card” holder.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante in Concord, New Hampshire, allowed the plaintiffs' complaint against Trump's order to proceed as a class action, allowing the policy to be blocked nationwide.

USA is “stupid”

Trump became the first sitting president to attend an oral argument at the Supreme Court, according to Clare Cushman, resident historian at the Supreme Court Historical Society. Accompanied by White House adviser David Warrington, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Trump sat in court for a little more than an hour and a half.

US Solicitor General John Sauer, representing the administration, told the justices that most countries do not automatically grant birthright citizenship. “This degrades the priceless and profound gift of American citizenship,” Sauer said. “It functions as a powerful attractor for illegal immigration and rewards illegal aliens who not only break immigration laws, but also get ahead of those who follow the rules,” argued the administration's attorney.

The United States is among 33 countries with automatic birthright citizenship policies, according to the Pew Research Center.

After the debates, Trump wrote on social networks that the United States is “STUPID” for granting birthright citizenship.

14th Amendment

The lower court found that Trump's directive violated the citizenship provisions of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, as well as a federal law enshrining the right to citizenship by birth, ruling in a class action brought by parents and children whose citizenship is threatened by the directive.

The 14th Amendment has long been interpreted as guaranteeing citizenship to children born in the United States, with only a few narrow exceptions, such as the children of foreign diplomats or members of an enemy occupation force.

The provision in question, known as the Citizenship Clause, states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”

The administration said the phrase “subject to its jurisdiction” means that being born in the United States is not enough to obtain citizenship and excludes the children of immigrants who are in the country illegally or whose presence is legal but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas.

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, following the Civil War of 1861-1865, which ended slavery in the United States, and overturned a famous 1857 Supreme Court decision that had declared that people of African descent could never become American citizens.

What the Supreme Court judges said

Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, told Sauer that his arguments limiting who qualifies for citizenship at birth seem “outlandish.”

Noting that historically the phrase “under its jurisdiction” has excluded children of ambassadors or enemies during a hostile invasion, Roberts said Sauer is trying to extend those examples to anyone in the US illegally. “I'm not really sure how you get to that large a group from such small and somewhat atypical examples,” Roberts said.

Roberts also challenged Sauer to provide evidence for the administration's stated concern about “birth tourism,” in which foreigners travel to the United States to give birth and obtain citizenship for their children. “Do you have any information on how common this practice is or how significant the problem is?” Roberts asked. “Nobody knows for sure,” Sauer replied, citing media reports about foreign companies specializing in birth tourism.

Liberal judge Elena Kagan said that the administration's interpretation of the 14th amendment is not supported by the text of the provision. “You're using some pretty obscure sources to come up with this concept,” Kagan told Sauer.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Cecillia Wang, arguing for the plaintiffs, told the judges that Trump's order was illegal.

“Ask any American what our citizenship rule is, and they'll tell you, 'Everyone born here is a citizen, equally,'” Wang said. “This rule was enshrined in the 14th Amendment to put it outside the sphere of influence of any government official who would want to destroy it,” Wang explained.

An anti-Trump Supreme Court precedent

Trump has repeatedly criticized certain members of the Justice Court since it on February 20 reversed the drastic global tariffs he imposed last year under a national emergency law, going so far as to say he was “disgusted” by two justices he appointed during his first term – Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett – and called them “a disgrace to their families”.

Limiting people who qualify for birthright citizenship is a top priority for Trump, who issued the order last year on his first day back in office as part of a package of policies aimed at combating legal and illegal immigration. Critics have accused him of racial and religious discrimination in his approach to immigration.

The administration has argued that citizenship is granted only to the children of those whose “primary loyalty” is to the United States, including citizens and permanent residents. Such loyalty is established by “legal domicile”, which the administration's lawyers define as “legal and permanent residence in a country, with the intention to stay”.

Several judges have analyzed this definition. “Whose domicile matters?” Gorsuch asked Sauer. “Husband's? Wife's? What if they're not married?” Gorsuch added: “How are we going to establish domicile? … Do we have to do that for every individual?”

Barrett, for her part, cited other examples, including how to determine the parents' intent to stay in the US, noting that in some cases, a child's parents are unknown. “How would that work? How would you adjudicate these cases? You won't know, at the time of birth, for some people, whether they intend to stay or not, including American citizens, by the way,” Barrett said.

The appellants argue that the Supreme Court has already settled the issue of birthright citizenship in an 1898 case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which recognized that the 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship within the United States, including to the children of foreign nationals.

Gorsuch made it clear that he did not think Trump's position could be reconciled with that precedent from 1898. “I'm not sure how much you want to rely on Wong Kim Ark,” Gorsuch told Sauer. Gorsuch also pointed out that the Supreme Court member who dissented in that ruling, Justice John Marshall Harlan, later said it applied even to the children of temporary visitors.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, presenting a hypothetical scenario, asked Wang to address the administration's argument that birthright citizenship should be understood in light of an 1866 civil rights law that excluded citizenship for those who are “subjects of a foreign power.”

“A boy is born here to an Iranian father who entered the country illegally. That boy is automatically an Iranian citizen at birth and has a duty to perform military service for the Iranian government,” Alito said in his hypothetical. “Is he not subject to some foreign power?”

The administration argues that precedent from 1898 supports Trump's order because, according to the court's ruling in that case, at the time of his birth, Wong Kim Ark's parents were domiciled and permanently resident in the United States.

Large-scale effects

A possible Supreme Court ruling upholding the administration's view could affect the legal status of up to 250,000 children born each year, according to some estimates, and would require the families of millions more to prove the citizenship status of their newborns.

Alito asserted that the authors of the 14th Amendment could not have conceived of modern immigration patterns.

“We're dealing here with something that was virtually unknown at the time of the passage of the 14th Amendment, which is illegal immigration,” Alito said.

The Supreme Court has backed Trump on other major immigration policies since he returned to the presidency. The supreme court is expected to rule by the end of June.