2026-07-01T11:00:26.024Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/01/politics/trump-supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-major-accomplishment-analysis
2025年1月，唐纳德·特朗普总统在重返白宫的首日，用黑色马克笔签署了一项限制出生公民权的行政命令，他当时称：“这是一项重大举措。”
这是一次大胆的博弈。
但从最核心的层面来看，它失败了。最高法院以6票对3票的投票结果驳回了他试图终结“无论父母移民身份如何，所有在美国领土上出生的儿童均为美国公民”这一保障的尝试。
多数方重申了数百年来人们对自动公民权的共识，这一共识得到了第十四修正案的支持，该修正案规定“所有在合众国出生或归化合众国并受其管辖的人，都是合众国的和他们居住州的公民。”
但特朗普的整体努力——尽管激进——却在司法和公众层面取得了令人意外的进展。
这一长期以来最多被视为边缘议题的主张，获得了包括25个州和相当数量国会议员在内的主流支持。更重要的是，从未来角度看，尽管有三名大法官明确持反对意见，但第四名大法官布雷特·卡瓦诺也加入了异议方，认为本案不存在第十四修正案违宪问题。（卡瓦诺支持多数方否决特朗普的行政令，但他基于1940年和1952年的移民法案得出了自己的观点。）
卡瓦诺暗示，特朗普或许可以通过新的联邦立法实现其目标。
“国会可以——符合第十四修正案的规定——修改（相关联邦法律），或另行制定新法案，为非法或临时居留外国公民在美国所生子女设立出生公民权例外情形。”
这一想法在周二的判决后鼓舞了特朗普和共和党盟友。在“特朗普诉芭芭拉”案判决公布后不久，总统在Truth Social上发文称：“最高法院维持了出生公民权，这对我们国家来说太糟糕了，但我们可以在国会通过立法轻松弥补这一点，在本届总统任期的支持下，这一过程中已经明确了这一点。不需要冗长繁琐的宪法修正案！”
特朗普认为任何立法都可以凌驾于美国宪法保障之上的观点是错误的——至少以当前的最高法院阵容来看是如此。以首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨为首的五名大法官多数意见称，宪法保护出生公民权。与罗伯茨一同支持多数意见的还有保守派同僚艾米·科尼·巴雷特，以及自由派大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔、埃琳娜·卡根和凯坦吉·布朗·杰克逊。
在其简洁而有力的判决意见中，罗伯茨表示此事已无回头之路。他将出生公民权深深植根于英国普通法、美国的起源以及第十四修正案重建时期的历史背景中。
“当时和现在，公民权都是拥有各项权利的基础——自由参与我们政治共同体的权利，”罗伯茨写道。“第十四修正案的制定者将这一承诺延伸给了‘这片土地上每一个自由出生的人’。我们今天仍在践行这一承诺。”
副总统JD·万斯周三在福克斯新闻节目中谈及了“一线希望”。卡瓦诺与其他异议大法官站在一起，“这意味着出生公民权这一概念，在第十四修正案看来是荒谬的，它正岌岌可危。”
出生公民权争议还因去年最高法院的另一项判决进一步为特朗普造势。当他就职日的行政令争议首次提交大法官时，最高法院借此案大幅限制了下级法院法官在全国范围内阻止有争议的总统举措的权力。
这一判决标志着特朗普第二任期内的关键早期胜利。此前，下级法院法官曾发布此类全国禁令，阻止特朗普的有争议政策在全国范围内实施。
https://www.cnn.com/
周二的多数意见和异议意见长达189页，这确保了特朗普行政令的影响将持续发酵。
“这一裁决不会终结这场辩论，”代表密苏里州参议员埃里克·施密特和德克萨斯州众议员奇普·罗伊的上诉诉讼律师查尔斯·库珀说道。这两位共和党议员都支持特朗普政府。“如果说这个案子还有什么作用的话，那就是让人们清楚地看到了出生公民权带来的一些严重代价。”
大法官塞缪尔·阿利托在异议声明中开篇就提到了“生育游客”问题——即专门来美国分娩后立即回国的女性。阿利托断言，周二的判决将保留“非法入境或留在美国的强大动机”。
（此案也激发了那些捍卫出生公民权的人士的热情。在超过60份“法庭之友”意见书里，三分之二都支持移民权利团体，反对特朗普。）
特朗普将这项行政令作为其反移民议程的核心。罗伯茨法院此前已支持多项其他举措，就在上周，特朗普政府还终止了对海地、叙利亚等因军事冲突或地震等自然灾害陷入困境国家移民的“临时保护身份”人道主义救济。
但限制出生公民权的努力似乎对特朗普有着特殊的个人意义，他曾在4月1日亲自出席最高法院的口头辩论，这是一个不同寻常的举动。
提起诉讼的移民及其倡导者辩称，这项拒绝为在美国非法居留或仅持临时签证的母亲所生婴儿提供公民身份的行政命令，违反了第十四修正案以及与其措辞一致的联邦法律。
“第十四修正案明确的一刀切规则推动了我们国家的发展与繁荣，”代表原告的美国公民自由联盟的塞西莉亚·王在口头辩论中告诉大法官们。“它源于文本和历史。它切实可行，还能防止操纵。这项行政令在所有这些方面都失败了。大量美国法律将变得毫无意义，数千名美国婴儿将立即丧失公民身份，如果你认同政府的理论，那么过去、现在和未来数百万美国人的公民身份都可能受到质疑。”
https://www.cnn.com/
特朗普的律师们援引了第十四修正案中“受其管辖”一词。美国副检察长D.约翰·佐尔称，这要求一个人“定居”在美国，以确立对该国的直接效忠。
“公民权条款是在内战后通过的，旨在给予新获得自由的奴隶及其子女公民身份，他们因世代定居于此而对美国效忠，”佐尔辩称。“它并没有给予临时访客或非法外籍人士的子女公民身份，这些人没有这样的效忠关系。”
但罗伯茨多数意见认为，国会从未考虑过将个人定居作为出生公民权的条件。
“如果国会打算将公民权与每个人的定居挂钩……我们有理由预期至少会有一些相关讨论，”罗伯茨写道，并补充说，在有关公民权条款的相关讨论和辩论中，“定居”一词几乎没有出现。
当罗伯茨周二在高位审判席宣布判决时，他以沉稳、实事求是的语气陈述，仿佛结果一目了然且完全可预见。在仅用7分钟简要说明判决结果后，他总结道：“我们在此并未开辟新的法律领域。”
他的书面判决同样简洁，仅有26页。
然而，异议方的激烈情绪——这已经在推动特朗普政府的相关行动——不容否认。
在长达91页的异议意见中，托马斯对多数意见做出了最严厉的评价，他呼应了特朗普政府的立场，即内战后通过的第十四修正案专门保障前奴隶及其子女的公民权。
“（最高法院）为第十四修正案的可悲历史再添一笔，该修正案的设计和初衷是为被解放的黑人争取平等权利，但如今却被重新用于重建国会从未支持过的政治议程。”
在结束其意见时，托马斯引用了大法官约翰·马歇尔·哈伦在1896年普莱西诉弗格森案中的异议意见，该案维持了火车及其他公共设施上的种族隔离制度。
“公民权条款‘极大地提升了美国公民权的尊严和荣耀’，”托马斯写道，“今天的判决贬低了这种公民权。”
托马斯还写道，这一观点无疑会得到特朗普的认同：“我不确定今天的判决能否经受住时间的考验。”
Trump’s audacious bid to end birthright citizenship was not an entire loss at the Supreme Court
2026-07-01T11:00:26.024Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/01/politics/trump-supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-major-accomplishment-analysis
When President Donald Trump used his black Sharpie on his first day back in office to sign an executive order in January 2025 limiting birthright citizenship, he said, “This is a big one.”
It was an audacious gambit.
And in the most essential way, it failed. The Supreme Court by a 6-3 vote rejected his attempt to end the guarantee that all children born on US soil are citizens, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
The majority reaffirmed a centuries-old understanding of automatic citizenship, buttressed by the 14th Amendment, that dictates “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
But the overall Trump effort – as radical as it was – made surprising headway in both the court and public spheres.
The administration gained some mainstream support, including the backing of 25 states and a significant number of members of Congress, for an idea that had long been considered fringe at best. More importantly for the future, while three justices outright dissented, a fourth (Brett Kavanaugh), joined dissenters in finding no 14th Amendment violation. (Kavanaugh signed onto the majority decision blocking Trump’s executive order but based his view on a violation of immigration statutes dating to 1940 and 1952.)
Kavanaugh suggested that Trump might accomplish his goal through new federal legislation.
“Congress could – consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment – amend (the relevant federal laws) or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country.”
That concept emboldened Trump and Republican allies Tuesday. The president said in a Truth Social post shortly after the decision in Trump v. Barbara was issued: “The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process. No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!”
Trump is wrong that any legislation could override the US constitutional guarantee – at least with this current court. A five-justice majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, said the Constitution safeguarded birthright citizenship. He was joined by fellow conservative Amy Coney Barrett and liberals Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In his taut and forceful opinion, Roberts suggested there was no turning back. He grounded birthright deeply in the English common law, America’s origins and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Reconstruction-era history.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights – to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”
Vice President JD Vance spoke of a “silver lining” on Fox News on Wednesday. Kavanaugh’s vote with the other dissenters “means that the concept of birthright citizenship, which is an absurdity to the 14th Amendment, that concept is hanging by a thread.”
The birthright citizenship controversy further served Trump by what it produced in a separate Supreme Court decision last year. When the dispute over his Inauguration Day order first reached the justices, they used the case to dramatically limit the power of lower court judges to block contested presidential initiatives nationwide.
The decision marked a crucial early win for Trump in his second presidency. Lower court judges had been imposing such universal injunctions against the government to prevent Trump’s controversial policies from being enforced across the country.
https://www.cnn.com/
Tuesday’s majority and dissenting decisions, covering 189 pages, guarantee the reverberations of Trump’s executive order will continue.
“This ruling is not going to end the debate,” said appellate litigator Charles Cooper, who represented Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, two of the Republican members of Congress who sided with the Trump administration. “If the case has done nothing else, it has brought a bright light of illumination on some of the serious costs of birthright citizenship.”
Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissenting statement, opened with the problem of “birth tourists, women who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child and then promptly return home.” Alito asserted that Tuesday’s decision would preserve “a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally.”
(The case also galvanized those ready to defend birthright citizenship. Two-thirds of the more than 60 “friend of the court” filings in the case sided with the immigrant-rights groups against Trump.)
Trump had made this executive order the centerpiece of his anti-immigration agenda. The Roberts Court has upheld many other initiatives, including just last week, the Trump administration’s decision to end humanitarian relief known as “temporary protected status” for Haitian, Syrian and other migrants whose home countries are torn by military strife or earthquakes and other natural disasters.
But the effort to curtail birthright citizenship seemed particularly personal to Trump, who had taken the dramatic step of attending the Supreme Court oral arguments on April 1.
Immigrants and their advocates who sued argued that the order denying citizenship to babies born to mothers in the US unlawfully or only on a temporary visa violated the 14th Amendment and federal statutes that mirrored its language.
“The Fourteenth Amendment’s fixed bright-line rule has contributed to the growth and thriving of our nation,” the ACLU’s Cecillia Wang, representing the challengers, had told the justices during oral arguments. “It comes from text and history. It is workable, and it prevents manipulation. The Executive Order fails on all those counts. Swaths of American laws would be rendered senseless, thousands of American babies will immediately lose their citizenship, and if you credit the government’s theory, the citizenship of millions of Americans, past, present, and future, could be called into question.”
https://www.cnn.com/
Trump’s lawyers latched onto the 14th Amendment’s “subject to the jurisdiction” phrase. US Solicitor General D. John Sauer said it required that a person be “domiciled” in the United States, to establish a direct allegiance to the country.
“The Citizenship Clause was adopted just after the Civil War to grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and their children, whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile here,” Sauer argued. “It did not grant citizenship to the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens, who have no such allegiance.”
But the Roberts majority concluded that Congress never considered making an individual’s domicile a condition of birthright citizenship.
“If Congress intended to hinge citizenship on each individual’s domicile … it is reasonable to expect there would have been at least some discussion of the topic,” Roberts wrote, adding that the word “domicile” barely appeared in the relevant discussion and debate over the Citizenship Clause.
When Roberts announced the decision from the elevated bench on Tuesday, he presented it in a steady matter-of-fact tone, as if the outcome was easy and wholly predicable. And after a relatively swift seven minutes laying out the judgment, he concluded, “We break no new ground here.”
His written opinion was similarly tight at 26 pages.
Yet the passion of the dissenters, which was already fueling Trump administration moves, could not be denied.
In his 91-page dissent, Thomas expressed the harshest assessment of the majority’s decision, as he echoed the Trump administration’s insistence that the 14th Amendment enacted after the Civil War specifically guaranteed citizenship for former slaves and their children.
“(T)he Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”
As Thomas concluded his opinion, he quoted from Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent from the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case that upheld racial segregation on trains and other public facilities.
“The Citizenship Clause ‘added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship,’” Thomas wrote, “Today’s opinion devalues that citizenship.”
And Thomas wrote, in a sentiment that Trump would no doubt embrace: “I am not sure that today’s opinion will stand the test of time.”