President Trump took a major hit today in Trump v. Barbara, where the Supreme Court affirmed a ruling against his birthright citizenship executive order.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion of the Court. He was joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson.

But the loudest voice in the case did not come from the majority. It came from Justice Clarence Thomas, who filed a blistering dissent joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Thomas went straight to the history of the Fourteenth Amendment and argued the majority got it wrong.

Thomas anchored his dissent in Dred Scott, the case that would have permanently denied citizenship to black Americans.

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He wrote that the Reconstruction Congress overruled that decision with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

His point was direct. Both the Civil Rights Act and the Citizenship Clause guaranteed citizenship to persons born and domiciled in the United States regardless of race.

Neither one, Thomas argued, guaranteed citizenship to persons who are not domiciled here.

Thomas wrote that the Citizenship Clause was enacted for freed slaves like Dred Scott and men like Frederick Douglass. He pointed to Senator Lyman Trumbull’s explanation that being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States meant not owing allegiance to anybody else.

The dissent did not stop at history. Thomas hammered the majority for the scope of what it did.

He wrote that the Court took the extraordinary step of holding the order facially unconstitutional, making it unlawful for President Trump to enforce it against even a single person.

Then came the closing blow. Thomas wrote that the Citizenship Clause added to the dignity and glory of American citizenship, and that the majority’s opinion devalues that citizenship.

Thomas and Gorsuch were not alone in breaking from the majority. Justice Samuel Alito filed his own dissent, and Gorsuch filed a separate dissent as well.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh took a middle path that still cut against the majority’s constitutional reasoning. According to the Supreme Court opinion, Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment and dissented in part, which makes the lineup more complicated than a simple left-right headline.

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The official opinion says Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the Court, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson. It also records Kavanaugh’s separate posture, Thomas’ dissent joined by Gorsuch, and separate dissents from Alito and Gorsuch.

Kavanaugh wrote that President Trump’s executive order did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

His objection was statutory, not constitutional, because he said the order ran up against 8 U.S.C. 1401(a) unless and until Congress changes that law.

That distinction matters. For Kavanaugh, the administration lost because Congress had not acted yet; for Thomas, the majority went much further and misread the Constitution itself.

The order at the center of all this was Executive Order 14160, titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.

According to the Federal Register, the order was Executive Order 14160, published on January 29, 2025, at 90 FR 8449.

The title alone shows the administration’s framing: Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship. The order told federal agencies not to issue or accept documents recognizing citizenship for children in two specified categories when the father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.

Those categories covered a mother unlawfully present in the United States, and a mother lawfully but temporarily present, including under the visa waiver program or on a student, work, or tourist visa.

That is the heart of the fight. Thomas read the Citizenship Clause as a guarantee for the freed and the domiciled, not for children of temporary visitors and illegal aliens who, in his view, remained tied to another sovereign.

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The majority rejected that argument. Thomas answered by going back to Dred Scott, Frederick Douglass, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the original public meaning of jurisdiction.

Alec Lace highlighted the exact closing line that is going to stick from Thomas’ dissent.

Thomas said the Citizenship Clause added to the dignity and glory of American citizenship, then warned that today’s opinion devalues that citizenship.

That closing matters because it frames the ruling as more than a technical immigration loss for President Trump. Thomas treated it as a constitutional mistake about what American citizenship means, where it came from, and who the Fourteenth Amendment was written to protect.

The majority affirmed the ruling against the order, but the dissents make clear this argument is far from settled. Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito laid down a marker, and the history Thomas walked through is now the road map for the next round.

Read the full Supreme Court ruling here: Trump v. Barbara.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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