Supreme Court Set to Decide Landmark Cases Brought By Trump
The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will take up one of the most consequential constitutional showdowns of President Donald J. Trump’s second term, agreeing to hear oral arguments early next year on the legality of his Jan. 20 executive order aimed at ending automatic birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants and temporary visitors.
The order — a long-promised reform central to President Trump’s broader effort to restore integrity to America’s immigration system — has not yet taken effect due to immediate legal challenges. If upheld, it would halt the longstanding practice of granting citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ legal status.
Opponents claim the directive violates the Constitution and existing Supreme Court precedent, according to SCOTUSBlog, but supporters argue the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause has been misinterpreted for decades and was never intended to extend automatic citizenship to the children of people in the country unlawfully.
The Court’s decision to hear the dispute appeared in a brief order list following the justices’ private conference. Another list, detailing petitions the Court declined to review, is expected Monday.
Birthright citizenship is a global rarity. Only about 30 countries — including Canada and Mexico — automatically grant citizenship to nearly everyone born within their borders. The United States adopted the practice in 1868 with the ratification of the 14th Amendment after the Civil War. That amendment’s Citizenship Clause states: “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.”
Its ratification overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, which had held that Black Americans could not be citizens.
The Supreme Court last directly addressed the matter in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, where a 6–2 majority ruled that a man born in California to Chinese noncitizen parents was a U.S. citizen. Writing for the Court, Justice Horace Gray argued that the 14th Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory,” extending even to children of resident aliens. In dissent, Chief Justice Melville Fuller countered that Wong was not fully “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States because his parents owed allegiance to China and were barred by law from naturalizing.
President Trump’s order drew swift opposition from activist groups and Democratic-led jurisdictions. A federal judge in Seattle quickly issued a temporary block, and another judge in Maryland imposed an injunction as a lawsuit filed by immigrant-rights organizations and several pregnant women moves forward. The administration has signaled from the beginning that the matter would ultimately be resolved by the Supreme Court — and that the constitutional question is overdue for clarification.
The Court is also preparing to hear another historic case that could reshape the modern administrative state itself. For more than a century, independent federal agencies have operated with substantial insulation from presidential oversight, setting national policy in areas including finance, transportation, consumer protection, and elections. Congress designed these structures to maintain continuity across administrations, but critics argue they have become unaccountable centers of bureaucratic power.
Oral arguments set for Monday will test whether a president — as head of the Executive Branch — has the authority to remove members of these agencies at will. The case arises from President Trump’s effort to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission appointed in 2023 to a seven-year term intended to shield the agency from political influence.
Lower courts held that the president lacked authority to dismiss her, citing a federal statute allowing removal only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Congress enacted those limits to preserve the commission’s independence.
But the Trump administration contends that such restrictions violate the Constitution by preventing the president from exercising full control over executive-branch personnel — a core requirement for responsible governance. As ABC News reported, the administration argues that agency officials who wield executive power must be accountable to the president, not protected by statutory barriers that entrench bureaucratic authority.
ABC News noted bluntly: “If he prevails, presidents could win unfettered power to terminate members of independent agencies at-will, which in turn could mark the end of their independence.”
Combined, the two cases present the Supreme Court with an extraordinary pair of questions: whether America will continue its controversial interpretation of birthright citizenship, and whether the presidency — under President Donald J. Trump — will be restored to the level of constitutional authority the Founders intended.