On Tuesday the Supreme Court dismantled one of the Trump administration's most aggressive immigration moves. Voting 6-3 in Trump v. Barbara, the justices struck down Executive Order 14160 — the directive signed on Trump's first day back in office that aimed to cut off automatic citizenship for infants whose parents lacked legal status or were only in the country temporarily.
Chief Justice John Roberts authored the lead opinion, picking up support not just from the court's three Democratic appointees but also from fellow conservative Amy Coney Barrett, and concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship guarantee extends to those children without exception. Justice Brett Kavanaugh landed in the same place by a different route: rather than invoking the Constitution, he found the order incompatible with an existing federal statute, leaving Congress an opening to revise that law down the road if it chooses. The court's remaining three conservatives — Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito — dissented in separate opinions, with Alito branding the majority's reasoning "a serious mistake."
