Birthright citizenship has been “grossly abused,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said, reacting to the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling which rejected President Donald Trump’s reform of the nation’s birthright citizenship policy.
The Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Trump’s January 2025 order determined that “the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States,” not extending to an individual whose mother was “unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth” or an individual whose “mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary … and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion on the outcome, but he noted that he believes the order violates federal law – which Congress could essentially change – but he disagrees that the Constitution itself overtly bans Trump’s order.
Upon learning of the ruling during a press conference, Speaker Johnson said, “You could say that’s a textualist originalist view. However, I do think that this has been grossly abused in recent years.”
“That is the case that was being made by the plaintiffs in the case, and we’re very sympathetic to that, because it is a serious problem,” he said, discussing the abuse of birthright citizenship. “It’s become a tourism, birthing tourism, you know, a trend where people would just come, and you just come onto the soil and have your child, and they’re able to avail themselves of the welfare state and everything else.”
He continued, “It’s been abused. It’s one of those things that was intended to serve a noble, important purpose, and has been thwarted and overused and abused, and so I’m sure that we’ll continue to look at that.”
“I’m sure the conclusion from this opinion is going to be that … you’ve got to amend the Constitution to fix that,” he said, noting that it is a big challenge.
“It’s only happened 27 times in our whole nation’s history, and the reason is because you’ve got to have two thirds of the both chambers of Congress and three fourths of the states to ratify. It’s usually at least a many years-long process, and very complicated,” Johnson said. “We’ll see. I’m sure there’s gonna be lots of discussion about that. I will say I’m very disappointed in that outcome. I think it subjects the country to serious challenges going forward, and we’ll have to deal with it as a Congress.”