Ranking Members Raskin, Scanlon, Jayapal Statement on Supreme Court Decision in Trump v. Barbara

Washington, D.C. (June 30, 2026)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, issued the following statement after the Supreme Court released its decision in Trump v. Barbara:

“The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is not ambiguous, and it is inviolable: all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States. That principle was written into our Constitution in the aftermath of the Civil War to extinguish forever the poisonous idea that citizenship could be determined by blood, race, lineage, or political manipulation.

“On Day One, Donald Trump set out to shred that constitutional command. Today, a majority of the Supreme Court, including one of Trump’s own appointees, rejected his profoundly unconstitutional Executive Order. Even in a Court packed and stacked by MAGA appointments, six of the nine justices banded together to strike down Trump’s astonishing attempt to override, with the stroke of his pen, the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment, more than a century of Supreme Court precedent, and laws enacted by Congress. This ruling delivers a resounding rebuke to a lawless scheme by Donald Trump and Stephen Miller to divide the people and destroy the meaning of American citizenship.

“The Court affirmed what House Democrats argued in our amicus brief: the Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship to children born in America and vests in Congress, not the President, the authority to pass immigration laws. A presidential executive order can nullify neither the Constitution’s Citizenship Clause nor immigration laws passed by Congress. 

“If you’re born here, you’re an American. It is what the Constitution plainly commands, and hundreds of thousands died to enshrine this principle. Neither Donald Trump nor any President has any power to deny children born in America their constitutional birthright.”