"Enabling Our Collective Demise"

The Court's CASA ruling has more in common with the 1857 Dred Scott decision than the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Last Friday was one of the darker days of Donald Trump’s second attempt at destroying the United States, stealing billions of dollars from all non-wealthy Americans, stuffing hundreds of millions into his own pockets, making sure the ultra-rich never pay taxes, while simultaneously forcing those same Americans into inescapable poverty, permanent disability, incurable disease, suffering in an increasingly and dangerously overheated climate, and, ultimately, shoving them into an early grave. (Or a concentration camp, complete with showers.)

The Supreme [sic] Court, which almost exactly one year ago ruled, Trump could operate as a King, with all of his criminal actions immune from any future prosecution, decreed June 27, 2025, that the country’s lower courts were barred from stopping any of Trump’s illegal policies by issuing nationwide injunctions. It was merely the latest unprecedented and unconstitutional gift from the most corrupt court (on any level) in the country’s long history to the demented Felon-in-Chief, dinner host of Nazis, appointer of rapists, and bff of more than a dozen known pedophiles.

Some of the disturbing analysis from sober-minded observers.

The Supreme Court's Birthright Citizenship Ruling Is a 5-Alarm Catastrophe
In Trump v. CASA, the court hands the president yet more unaccountable authority—and yanks us into a neo-Confederate legal nightmare.
Elie Mystal, The Nation, June 27, 2025

In its ruling on Friday, the court's usual six monarchists granted Donald Trump's request to reexamine various nationwide injunctions preventing Trump and Stephen Miller from implementing their plans to revoke birthright citizenship to any American who doesn't happen to be white. With the legal sleight of hand so beloved by the Roberts court, the ruling doesn't actually allow Trump to end birthright citizenship. It just makes it incredibly difficult for courts to stop him from ending birthright citizenship. . . . Once you read the fine print, it becomes clear that this decision is a historic, five-alarm catastrophe. . . .

The decision means that some courts, districts, and states will still defend the concept of birthright citizenship, while others will not. That could mean that whether or not a child born in America on or after June 27, 2025, is considered a citizen of the United States will depend on what state, or even county, that child happens to be born in.

If that setup sounds familiar, it should. It is exactly how this country determined citizenship from June 21, 1788, (when the Constitution was ratified) until July 9, 1868 (when the 14th Amendment was ratified). . . . We have already fought over this. It was called the Civil War. We resolved this issue; it's called the first section of the 14th Amendment. We have tried doing citizenship the Confederate way and realized it was an error.

But that antebellum, neo-Confederate structure is what the Supreme Court brings back to us today. . . . By taking away the ability of courts to enter nationwide injunctions in this case, the court is giving Trump carte blanche to violate the constitutional definition of citizenship in any district where a friendly Trump judge will allow him to. And, in practice, this ruling will extend to every other single issue where Trump has been stopped thanks to a nationwide injunction. . . .

Nationwide injunctions have been a thing for a long time. . . . If ever there was a reason to have a nationwide injunction, it would be a situation where a president brazenly refuses to follow the most important amendment ever inserted into the Constitution. . . .

To get to the point where she can return us to the state-by-state determination of citizenship practiced during the enslaver period of this country, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the majority opinion for the Republicans, argues that nationwide injunctions should never be a thing. Her principal reasoning for this is… the High Court of Chancery in England, which existed at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. I wish I were making that up, but I'm not nearly creative enough to do it. . . .

We're living in a world where six Republican Supreme Court justices used the courts of a monarchy we revolted against as the controlling authority on whether the president of the United States has to follow the Constitution.

And Barrett doesn't stop there. She isn't sure that any American court can make Trump follow the law. . . .

According to Barrett, the law is a mere suggestion to Donald Trump. She hopes he follows it, but if he doesn't, there might be nothing the courts can do. . . .

[T]he last time the Supreme Court decided to "resolve" the citizenship question in the United States, the outcome was the Dred Scott decision, the ruling was that a Black man had no rights the white man was bound to respect, and the result was a civil war. . . .

For a long time now, the Republicans on the Supreme Court have been trying to relitigate the 20th century and destroy all of the progress made during the Civil Rights era. But that is old news. . . .

They're now trying to relitigate the 19th century and destroy all of the progress made during the Reconstruction era. And right now, they're winning their second Civil War, without firing a shot.

The Supreme Court's Birthright Citizenship Ruling Could Not Be More Disastrous
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate June 27, 2025

The 6–3 ruling in Trump v. CASA will create chaos throughout the judiciary, and for real people in dire need of protection: The court rolled back three universal injunctions that had halted the president's attack on birthright citizenship, opening the door to its enforcement while the case is litigated. Within hours of the decision, Trump had promised to "promptly file" to move forward with his unconstitutional birthright citizenship removal plans. At the worst possible time, in the worst possible case, SCOTUS has ceded immense power to a president who is dead-set on abusing it. . . .

The order declares that the children of immigrants lacking permanent legal status and temporary visa holders may no longer obtain American citizenship at birth—a brazen violation of the 14th Amendment and more than 120 years of Supreme Court precedent that unambiguously enshrines this guarantee into law. . . .

Although CASA is not explicitly about this issue, [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor [in her furious dissent] spends many pages explaining why the 14th Amendment clearly grants birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants, regardless of their parents' legal status. "Few constitutional questions can be answered by resort to the text of the Constitution alone," she writes, "but this is one." History and precedent too confirm that Trump's order is grievously unconstitutional: "As every conceivable source of law confirms, birthright citizenship is the law of the land."

But . . . "No right," she warns, "is safe in the new legal regime the court creates." From this point on, courts will have to limit their relief to the parties, denying judges the ability to stop an unconstitutional policy dead in its tracks. . . . The president can resume implementing many elements of his agenda, including the illegal impoundment of appropriated funding, foreign-aid cuts, voter suppression, and immigration restrictions. . . .

Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Sotomayor's dissent in full. Jackson also penned a separate dissent that used even harsher rhetoric to accuse the majority of, in essence, crowning Trump a king. The court, the justice writes, has created a "zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes." As this "lawlessness" flourishes, "executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more." She condemns the decision as an "existential threat" to democracy and civil rights, one that "will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise."

The United States Is About to Embark on a Terrifying Experiment in Mass Statelessness
Matt Watkins, Slate, June 27, 2025

The 14th Amendment promises that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, are citizens. . . . That precedent has stood unshaken for over a century. But EO 14160 doesn't seek to overturn it through the courts. It seeks to nullify it in practice. . . . It instructs federal employees to delay, deny, or quietly decline to process the documents that transform constitutional rights into civic reality: birth certificates, Social Security numbers, and passports.

There will be no announcement. No formal declaration that a newborn has been excluded from the promise of citizenship. Instead, there will be delays. Silences. A birth certificate that never arrives. A passport application that disappears into administrative review. A Social Security number that is never assigned, leaving a child ineligible for Medicaid, public preschool, or programs like Head Start. The family will wait. They will make phone calls, send follow-up emails, perhaps even visit a local office. Eventually they will stop trying. . . . Two children born on the same morning in different states may receive entirely different legal treatment. One child, born in California, will grow up with access to health care, schooling, and identification. Another, born in Georgia or Indiana or Arizona, will begin life without any of those tools—not because of anything she did, but because of where her mother gave birth.

And for that second child, the consequences will not simply be delayed paperwork or bureaucratic hassle. They will be life-defining.

She will enter school late or not at all, because her parents cannot prove her age or residency. If she is enrolled, she may be dropped from programs that require federal verification. She will not qualify for school meals, Medicaid, or disability benefits. Her family may avoid clinics and hospitals, fearing attention or deportation. She will grow up hearing "no" in a dozen quiet ways: No, we can't sign you up. No, you're missing documentation. No, we can't make an exception. When her classmates apply for driver's licenses at 16, she will stay home. When they work part-time jobs or fill out the FAFSA, she will know it's not worth trying. If she becomes pregnant at 20, she may be unable to deliver her child in a hospital without risking exposure. If she applies for housing or credit, she will be denied for lack of a legal identity. If she tries to get married, register to vote, or access public services, she will be asked to produce a document that was never issued. Her exclusion will not be dramatic. It will simply shape everything she is allowed to do. . . .

What is unfolding is not simply a policy change. It is a fundamental question about who we are as a country. Do we still believe that birth on American soil secures a right to belong? Or will we accept a future in which the answer depends on paperwork, politics, and proximity to power?

The Supreme Court Just Revived a Key Portion of Dred Scott
Steven Lubet, Slate, June 27, 2025

For the first time in over a century, children will soon be born in the United States without the benefit of birthright citizenship . . . The court's ruling has more in common with the Dred Scott decision than with the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, which enshrined the right to birthright citizenship partially as a rebuke to the imperious Supreme Court that decided that shameful case. . . .

The majority was careful to note that they were not deciding the actual lawfulness of Trump's order, but only the scope of the existing injunctions. . . . [I]t may be years before there will be a final decision on the merits. In the meantime, thousands of children will be born with their citizenship at best in limbo, unable to obtain passports or Social Security numbers. . . .

The opening language of the 14th Amendment could not have been more inclusive, applying expansively to "all persons," and not only to the identifiable class of formerly enslaved persons and their children. Thus, the only relevant consideration is whether the children of so-called illegal aliens are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S.

The Supreme Court answered that question over 125 years ago in Wong Kim Ark, holding that the birthright clause of the 14th Amendment applied "beyond doubt" to "all blacks, as well as whites," in addition to Wong Kim Ark himself, who was born in San Francisco to parents who were Chinese nationals. . . .

Far from restoring the "original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment," as Sauer argued, Trump's executive order would actually revive the logic of Dred Scott by creating a new class of outcasts, excluded from the political community solely by virtue of their parentage. . . .

It was precisely that sort of deep degradation that the 14th Amendment was ratified to abolish. Its invocation of "all persons" was as clear a statement as the Framers could make that everyone born within our nation's borders would be "numbered among the people."

The Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of Trump's executive order, but it did something almost as bad. The Trump administration now has nearly free rein to impose "degradation" on American-born children by excluding them from the "community who form the sovereignty" of the United States.

It is likely to be years—if ever—before the court can undo the damage inflicted on countless children on Friday.

On Birthright Citizenship, the Supreme Court Gives Trump a Blunt Tool to Hammer Judges
The president applauded the conservative majority's 6-3 ruling limiting nationwide injunctions to stop executive orders, a move sure to sow chaos and open the door to unchecked lawlessness. As Justice Sotomayor wrote in dissent, "I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law."
Cristian Farias, Vanity Fair, June 27, 2025

[Trump-appointed justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion and] she studiously avoids what's staring her in the face—by curtly noting that "the birthright citizenship issue is not before us." In so doing, she's casting aside worries, and the real-world effect, that the Court's ruling will cause: a country where only those who rush to court to challenge a clearly illegal order under our laws will have relief from it, and those who can't—for various reasons, perhaps fear of getting rounded up, or even deported for not falling in line with the government's wishes—will simply suffer in hiding or in silence. . . .

Today's ruling goes beyond birthright citizenship. Trump, or a future president, could order tomorrow that all his political enemies be rounded up and imprisoned without any process at all. Does that mean, under today's ruling, that no one can sue to stop this flagrantly unconstitutional policy in its entirety? As Ketanji Brown Jackson puts it in a solo dissent: "The majority today says that, unless and until the other political rivals seek and secure their own personal injunctions, the Executive can carry on acting unconstitutionally with respect to each of them, as if the Constitution's due process requirement does not exist."

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