“Not a Good Sign for DOJ”: SCOTUS Lawyers Warn of Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Cases
Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck, an American legal scholar who specializes in the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice, commented on the birthright citizenship cases approaching the U.S. Supreme Court.
Vladeck wrote on X: “In the birthright citizenship cases, #SCOTUS has asked the challengers to respond to the Trump administration’s emergency applications by 4:00 p.m. (ET) on Friday, April 4, i.e., three weeks from today. I’ve *never* seen such a long schedule. That’s … not a good sign for DOJ.”
In the birthright citizenship cases, #SCOTUS has asked the challengers to respond to the Trump administration’s emergency applications by 4:00 p.m. (ET) on Friday, April 4, i.e., three weeks from today.
I’ve *never* seen such a long schedule. That’s … not a good sign for DOJ.
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) March 14, 2025
Note: Birthright citizenship was added to the Constitution in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was adopted following the Civil War. On his first day back in the Oval Office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States.
In response to Trump’s executive order, the ALCU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and other groups and pregnant women across the country have sued the Trump administration claiming the EO violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The Trump administration has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court three distinct district court injunctions (in Washington, Maryland, and Massachusetts) that barred the EO from going into effect nationally.
Fellow Georgetown Law professor and former DOJ Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal (with whom Vladeck worked on the 2006 Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which successfully challenged the constitutionality of George W. Bush’s Guantanamo Military Commissions), amplified Vladeck’s opinion on X — “not a good sign for the DOJ” — by reposting it.
Note: Eighteen members of Congress who serve on the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives led by chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) have sent an amici curiae brief to SCOTUS to endorse President Trump’s EO and claim, “the Fourteenth Amendment does not confer citizenship on the children of aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
The other 17 MAGA House Republicans are: Reps. Andy Biggs, Chip Roy, Brandon Gill, Troy Nehls, Lance Gooden, Victoria Spartz, Mark Harris, Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Onder, Harriet M. Hageman, Tom McClintock, Wesley Hunt, Glenn Grothman, Ben Cline, Russell Fry, Michael Baumgartner, and Brad Knott.
Note: Contrary to what the President has repeatedly claimed about the U.S. being the only country in the world that guarantees birthright citizenship, dozens of countries do, including the U.S.’s North American neighbors Canada and Mexico.