April 1 (UPI) — President Donald Trump took the unusual step of attending Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship, later criticizing the United States for being “stupid enough” to allow the practice.
The high court heard oral arguments in the case — Trump vs. Barbara — a challenge to Trump’s January 2025 executive order seeking to change the application of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, ending birthright citizenship.
By attending the hearing, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to sit in on oral arguments before the Supreme Court. He stayed in the courtroom for about an hour to hear Solicitor General D. John Sauer defend Trump’s executive order. Trump left the hearing about 15 minutes after a lawyer for the American Civili Liberties Union began its case against the order, CNBC reported.
After returning to the White House, Trump took to Truth Social to voice his opposition to birthright citizenship, which offers citizenship to the children born to immigrants in the United States in some situations.
“We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” Trump wrote.
A Pew Research Center analysis found that 32 other countries have birthright citizenship laws similar to the United States, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Pakistan and Venezuela.
Birthright citizenship is generally automatic in the United States with the exception of children born to foreign diplomats, born on foreign public ships in U.S. waters and born to foreign enemies with the United States during a hostile occupation.
Arguments Wednesday in part centered on what constitutes being domiciled in the United States. Trump’s lawyers argued that since undocumented immigrations aren’t in the United States legally, they’re not domiciled nor are they pledging allegiance to the United States. Therefore, they said, their children should have no claims to U.S. citizenship, The Guardian reported.
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan questioned why the Trump administration was getting into the semantics of the word when it isn’t included in the language of the citizenship clause.
“The text of the clause, I think, does not support you,” she told Sauer. “I think you’re sort of looking for some more technical, esoteric meaning.”
Chief Justice John Roberts described the “domicile” argument by the Trump lawyers as “very quirky.”
ACLU lawyer Cecillia Wang, said Trump’s executive order violated the 14th Amendment and could affect other laws.
“The government’s rule, which really is looking at whether something has a divided allegiance because they’re a citizen of another country, would exclude the children of all foreign nationals,” she said.
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