Supreme Court fight over birthright citizenship threatens 'chaos' in proving newborns' status [View all]

Source: CNN Politics

PUBLISHED Mar 29, 2026, 4:00 AM ET


Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a fired-up prosecutor last year as he shot off a withering series of nuts-and-bolts questions about how President Donald Trump would carry out his plan to rewrite of the way birthright citizenship has been understood in the United States for more than a century.

Would hospitals have to change the way they process newborns? Kavanaugh demanded. Would state governments have to do something different? How would federal officials determine citizenship if a birth certificate no longer sufficed? “Federal officials will have to figure that out essentially,” US Solicitor General D. John Sauer managed to say amid a fusillade of rapid-fire queries. “How?” Kavanaugh pressed. “So, you can imagine a number of ways —” Sauer began. “Such as?” Kavanaugh interjected.

As the Supreme Court prepares to consider the merits of Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship on Wednesday, most of the same practical questions Kavanaugh raised a year ago remain unanswered. Some of those questions speak to the bureaucratic nightmare that Americans — including US citizens — might face documenting a child’s immigration status. Others go to the very heart of what it means to be a US citizen.

Most of the court’s arguments this week will deal with the history of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which makes clear that “all persons born” in the United States who are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/politics/trump-birthright-case-us-citizen