If you listened to cable news for five minutes yesterday, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Supreme Court just handed Donald Trump a big red rubber stamp to cancel the 14th Amendment and start handing out deportation notices to newborns like party favors.
They didn’t. But the media coverage sure made it sound like they did.
Let’s be clear: the Supreme Court did not rule that Trump’s latest stunt (a legally illegal Executive Order denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented or temporarily legal mothers) is constitutional. In fact, Trump v. CASA, Inc. didn’t touch the constitutional issue at all.
What the Court actually said was this: lower federal courts overstepped when they issued nationwide (or as Justice Barrett insists, “universal”) injunctions blocking the enforcement of Trump’s Executive Order across the entire country. The ruling limits those injunctions to only the named plaintiffs, not every similarly situated person in America.
That’s it. That’s the ruling.
But you’d never know that from headlines screaming that the Court had “allowed Trump to strip birthright citizenship.” No, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and much of 卐itter, I’m looking at you, too.
This was a procedural ruling, not a constitutional endorsement of fascism. That doesn’t mean Trump’s order isn’t terrifying, it absolutely is. It just means the Court punted on that part of the issue and narrowed the tools courts can use to fight it. That matters. But nuance isn’t exactly clickbait, is it?
Let’s walk through what the Court actually said.
In Trump v. CASA, multiple district courts had blocked the enforcement of Trump’s Executive Order 14160, which declares that a person born in the U.S. is not a citizen if:
“(1) [Their] mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) [Their] mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident…”
— Executive Order 14160, quoted in the SCOTUS opinion
Naturally, lawsuits followed. Courts granted universal injunctions, meaning the government was barred from enforcing this order against anyone, not just the people who sued.
Trump’s lawyers ran to SCOTUS arguing that universal injunctions were beyond the lower courts’ powers. And on that point, the Court agreed.
“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”
— Trump v. CASA, Inc., Slip Opinion, p. 2
The ruling is clear: courts can only grant relief to plaintiffs with standing. The idea that a single judge in Maryland or Washington can shut down a federal law or executive order nationwide? SCOTUS says nope. Not unless you follow proper class-action procedures or have some other statutory authority.
This wasn’t about immigration. It wasn’t about babies. It was about judicial overreach, or at least what this Court sees as overreach. As the opinion dryly notes:
“Neither the universal injunction nor any analogous form of relief was available in the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the founding.”
— p. 6
Translation: if it didn’t exist in powdered wigs and candlelight, the Founding Fathers wouldn’t approve.
The way this ruling was covered was… well, embarrassing.
CNN reported that the “Supreme Court narrows birthright citizenship protections.” MSNBC breathlessly claimed the “Court sides with Trump in citizenship battle.” The right-wing noise machine predictably threw a MAGA party.
It’s all garbage.
The Court very explicitly did not decide whether the Executive Order violates the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause or the Nationality Act of 1940:
“The applications do not raise—and thus we do not address—the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act.”
— p. 4
They literally wrote it out, boldface-style, and the press still botched it. Repeatedly.
Is it laziness? Malice? A desperate need for “BREAKING” banners to compete with Trump’s Truth Social rants? Whatever the reason, the damage is real. People are scared … and rightfully so … but they’re scared of the wrong thing.
Just because SCOTUS didn’t weigh in on the merits doesn’t mean we should let Trump off the hook. This Executive Order is not just racist dog-whistling, it’s legally laughable.
The 14th Amendment says clearly:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Trump wants to pretend that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means “only if we like your parents.” Courts have rejected this nonsense for over a century, dating back to United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). But this is MAGAland, where the Constitution is more of a suggestion than a constraint.
Make no mistake: this order is a test balloon. They’re poking the fence, looking for weak spots in the legal system, and this ruling, though narrow, might embolden them. Especially if they can count on the media to misreport procedural technicalities as major victories.
Here’s the twist: this ruling may actually come back to bite the GOP.
As Ian Millhiser notes over at Vox, if Trump wins in November and tries to bulldoze liberal policies with a pen and a press conference, federal courts in blue states won’t be able to stop him for the whole country, just for their own plaintiffs.
But guess what happens if AOC or another Democrat is president? Red-state AGs won’t be able to run to a judge in Amarillo, Texas, and shut down an EPA rule, a student loan program, or a gun control measure nationwide.
The Roberts Court has essentially said: You want relief? Build a proper class action, follow the rules, and don’t expect to rule the world from a single bench.
There’s something refreshingly ironic about Trump-appointed justices neutering Trump’s own go-to tactic of forum shopping for national injunctions. If Democrats can stop hyperventilating long enough to read the decision, they might find it pretty damn useful.
This ruling doesn’t give Trump the power to erase citizenship. It just clips the wings of lower courts handing out nationwide relief like Oprah giving out cars. That’s a real shift, but it’s not the one the headlines told you.
So let’s stop crying wolf when the wolf hasn’t yet shown up. And let’s keep our pitchforks sharpened for the real battle: the one over whether America honors the Constitution for everyone, or only for those with the “right” parents.
Spoiler: that fight’s still coming. This just wasn’t it.