Supreme Court hears historic arguments on birthright citizenship

Our live coverage of today’s oral arguments has ended for the day. Read more about the key moments from the hearing in the posts below.

This sketch from court shows Kelsi Corkran, who is representing individuals and immigration advocacy groups, speaking to the US Supreme Court on May 15, 2025, during oral arguments in a case about the enforcement of President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship order.

The Supreme Court on Thursday seemed open to lifting a series of nationwide orders blocking President Donald Trump from enforcing his birthright citizenship policy, even as several of the justices wrestled with the practical implications of allowing the government to deny citizenship to people born in the US.

After more than two hours of argument, it was uncertain how a majority of the court might deal with those two competing interests.

Here’s a look at some of the key takeaways from the arguments:

Kavanaugh, a key vote, suggests class-action lawsuits instead: Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a member of the conservative wing, suggested that class-action lawsuits would suffice for allowing the challengers to Trump’s executive order to get broad relief from the courts. He brushed away the suggestion from challengers that relying on class certification as a tool raises many of the same issues as nationwide injunctions the president is complaining about.

It’s a technical point, Kavanaugh acknowledged, but a potentially important one. Part of what Kavanaugh seemed to be saying was that there was another way for the groups challenging Trump to quickly shut down the order. Chief Justice John Roberts, who was relatively quiet throughout the course of the arguments, repeatedly stressed that the courts, including the Supreme Court, could move “expeditiously.”

Liberals pepper Trump attorney on practical impact: The court’s three liberals battered Solicitor General D. John Sauer with questions about how rolling back nationwide injunctions would work in practice. They quickly sought to move the debate beyond the Trump’s administration assertion that its request was “modest.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed Sauer on whether his opposition to a universal injunction in the citizen birthright case could lead to requiring every individual to file their own lawsuit in the case. The court’s conservatives engaged with that discussion less but several nevertheless raised the issue.

This sketch from court shows D. John Sauer, the Solicitor General of the United States, speaking to the US Supreme Court on May 15, 2025, during oral arguments in a case about the enforcement of President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship order.

Barrett questions why merits aren’t before court: Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has emerged as a key vote in several cases this year involving the Trump administration, pressed Sauer about why the government is avoiding the merits of the birthright citizenship issue. Her line of questioning drew an important concession from Sauer, who acknowledged the legal arguments defending the merits of Trump’s order were “novel” and “sensitive.”

How soon will the court rule? Even though the case has reached the Supreme Court in an emergency posture, it’s not clear how long it will take the justices to resolve it. The last time the court held arguments in an emergency case, an appeal dealing with environmental regulations, it took the justices several months. Given the complications involved in the birthright case, it’s possible the court will need until the scheduled end of its term next month.

Read more on the takeaways from today’s arguments here.

Among the Supreme Court’s audience today was, John Eastman, an ex-Donald Trump attorney well-known for his efforts to block certification in the 2020 election and a leading proponent of ending birthright citizenship.

Eastman told CNN he was enthusiastic after arguments commenced, saying he thinks it is “clear” that the court will vote to limit universal injunctions.

Eastman said that he believes at least five, and maybe six, of the justices will rule in favor of the government. The court did seem open, at least, to siding with Trump on the issue of judicial power, which was key part of the president’s argument.

What was less clear, however, is whether the court was prepared to let Trump’s order take effect in the short-term while lower courts review its constitutionality.

Early in the arguments, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the court’s liberal wing, pointed to four previous Supreme Court rulings which she said would make Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship plainly illegal. Eastman called Sotomayor’s remarks “blatantly wrong.”

“The notion that this is well-settled law is nonsense,” Eastman, who explained this in a filed briefing, told CNN in the halls after arguments. Eastman’s perspective, however, has been rejected by federal courts multiple times.

People participate in a protest outside the US Supreme Court over President Donald Trump's move to end birthright citizenship as the court hears arguments over the order in Washington, DC, on May 15.

Leading protestors’ chants of phrases like “Si Se Puede” (“Yes We Can”), two immigrants’ rights advocates brought unique perspectives Thursday, to the debate over President Donald Trump’s executive order denying birthright citizenship to children born in the US to non-citizen parents.

Speaking to CNN outside the Supreme Court, Linda said she’s concerned that others in her situation in the future “won’t be able to have the same privileges that I’ve been able to have.” She said not only did she graduate near the top of her high school class and attend college, she’s also helped others along the way.

American flags are seen during the protest.

Olga Urbina and her 9-month-old son Ares Webster protest outside the US Supreme Court.

“I’ve been able to tutor more than 200 students while being here in the US. I’ve been able to help over 15 students graduate from high school … I’ve been able to show them scholarships, mentorship, bring them to organizations that will help them thrive.”

Jossie Sapunar, an immigrants’ rights advocate with the group CASA, told CNN she also would not be granted citizenship if she were born after the Trump order was enacted. She’s the daughter of immigrants from Chile.

People hold a banner as they participate in a protest outside the US Supreme Court.

“I would have nothing. Where would I be without any type of immigration?” she said.

Presented with the perspective argued by the Trump administration that the order seeks to prevent “birth tourism”, the practice of expectant mothers coming to the U.S. to give birth and secure citizenship for their children, Sapunar said “The constitution is crystal clear, President Trump … someone of any immigration status can come and have their child and that child has earned citizenship, per the Constitution.”

Rosanne Rodriguez, a US army veteran, told CNN, she wasn’t shocked when she heard that Trump was trying to end birthright citizenship.

“You know, they are seeing the replacement rate of white people versus everyone else, and they’re afraid,” Rodriguez, 43, said.

Michael Martinez, 39, said was important for him to join others to protest outside of the Supreme Court.

“I’m here to say ‘stop it. It’s not right what you’re doing. It’s injustice. (Trump) is coming for the 14th Amendment right now, what is next? The first, the second, the third?” He told CNN.

“I think we all like need to stand up and fight back, even if we aren’t immigrants ourselves or our children of immigrants,” Annie, who did not want to provide her last name out of fear of retribution, told CNN.

Genesis Jimenez, 24, said she is concerned about what the unintended consequences will be of challenging birthright citizenship on other issues under this Trump administration. “I’m very frustrated, but I’m not surprised.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday seemed open to lifting a nationwide order blocking President Donald Trump from enforcing his birthright citizenship policy even as it wrestled over the practical implications of allowing the administration to deny citizenship documents to some people born in the US.

Several conservative justices signaled deep reservations with the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions but, at the same time, seemed to be searching for other ways people could - in the short term - stop a policy that would upend more than a century of understanding about American citizenship.

After more than two hours of argument, it was not entirely clear how the court would resolve those two divergent goals. Several of the court’s conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts, stressed that they could review the merits of Trump’s executive order “expeditiously,” but appeared concerned about the nationwide injunctions that lower court judges had issued.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a key vote in the conservative wing, led several of his colleagues in suggesting the best approach might be to let those challenging the order do so another way – to file a class-action lawsuit that might provide widespread protection, but would require lower-court judges to make a more thorough review of who is covered by the order. That would be a higher hurdle for immigrant rights groups to clear but not an impossible one.

Without putting some other mechanism in place, wiping out the lower court’s order against Trump would allow the administration to enforce his birthright citizenship policy throughout much of the nation – even though it appears to contravene the plain text of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to people born in the United States regardless of the immigration status of their parents.

Several justices during today’s oral arguments on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions noted that if the court needed to move quickly to decide the merits or constitutionality of an issue, it has proven it can.

But President Donald Trump and his former personal attorney John Sauer, now solicitor general, also know that when the Supreme Court wants to take its time, it can have a dramatic impact.

In late 2023, anticipating the Supreme Court would eventually hear arguments on whether then-former President Trump had immunity for his actions in the White House, special counsel Jack Smith asked the court to accelerate the issue. The court declined, and didn’t hear arguments until April 2024 and didn’t rule until July 1, when it sided with Trump.

The delay meant that Smith’s investigation was on hold for several months during the presidential campaign. And even had it sided with the special counsel, it may have ensured that any trial wouldn’t be possible before November, aiding Trump and Sauer’s strategy to delay court action as long as possible.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pushed back on the idea, touted especially by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, that class actions can step in the place of nationwide injunctions.

Nationwide injunctions are doing a “conceptually different thing” than class actions, Jackson said.

Class actions give those covered within the class an enforceable right against the government, she asserted.

But such rights are not granted to people nationwide with nationwide injunctions, she said. Instead, those people are just benefiting from an order that requires the government to stop doing an unlawful thing, the liberal justice said.

Brett Kavanaugh on March 12 in Washington, DC.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that class certification would suffice for allowing the challengers to get broad relief from President Donald Trump’s executive order, and he brushed away the arguments from a lawyer for those challengers that relying on class certification as a tool raises many of the same issues as nationwide injunctions.

Kavanaugh asked Kelsi Corkran, who is representing individuals and immigration advocacy groups who are arguing in favor of the universal injunctions in the case: Doesn’t class action “solve the problem?”

Corkran countered that, with that option, many of the concerns raised about nationwide injunctions – including those raised by Justice Alito earlier in the argument, like forum shopping and foisting emergency disputes on the Supreme Court, would still exist.

That point didn’t seem to sway Kavanaugh.

He didn’t disagree, but stressed that the class actions might be the technically appropriate way of approaching the dispute under existing court rules. “We care about technicalities,” he said.

Several of the court’s conservatives seem open to siding with President Donald Trump on the idea that lower courts went too far in blocking his birthright citizenship executive order on a nationwide basis.

In question after question, key conservative votes – including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh – suggested that there might be better ways for individuals challenging the order to shut it down on a temporary basis.

Roberts repeatedly suggested that the merits and constitutionality of Trump’s order could get back to the Supreme Court in short order.

The Supreme Court, Roberts said, would deal with the merits of Trump’s order “with reasonable expedition.”

“And you think … it’s very possible that class certification may be granted,” said Kavanaugh, who appeared to be attempting to fish out the next steps of the legal case if Trump wins in the short term.

If the court ultimately moves in that direction, it would allow the administration to enforce its birthright order through much of the nation – at least in the short term. It would likely lead to a flurry of new lawsuits attempting to shut the order down with other legal claims.

This May 2022 photo shows Kelsi Corkran outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC.

Kelsi Corkran, an attorney for immigrant rights groups and expecting mothers, has started pressing the justices to keep the lower-court injunctions intact.

Corkran, the Supreme Court director at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection, is a seasoned advocate at the high court. She’s previously argued before the justices in high-profile cases concerning homelessness, civil rights and police conduct.

Her clients in the birthright citizenship challenge include CASA, Inc. and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, Inc., as well as several pregnant mothers, some of whom are members of those groups.

“An important component of Kelsi’s practice is preserving favorable civil rights decisions issued by the federal courts of appeals,” her official bio reads

Corkran previously held positions at the Justice Department and in the White House under former President Barack Obama and served as a clerk for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Several pregnant women who are in the US legally but with temporary immigration status told CNN this month that they fear their children will be born stateless.

Another said she was already pregnant when she discovered that President Donald Trump would make a major political issue out of birthright citizenship.

“I remember thinking it was so scary that my son had not yet been born and that his rights would be violated,” she told CNN.

Read more about the potential impact of the Supreme Court case.

New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum, arguing for the Democratic-led states challenging the president’s order, expressed sympathy with concerns that have been raised about nationwide injunctions. But he urged the Supreme Court to avoid drawing a “bright line” around them, arguing instead that the court could lay out criteria that would help lower courts decide when they’re appropriate.

He kept pressing the point after a lengthy question from conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who said that trial judges have an “occupational disease” of thinking they’re always right and that there’s nothing constraining them from imposing that judgment nationwide.

Feigenbaum brought up the Texas lawsuit challenging the immigration program known as DACA – which gave deportation protections to certain immigrants brought to the US at a young age – as an example of case where it was clear a nationwide injunction wasn’t appropriate.

In that case, Texas argued that DACA was costing it money because of the benefits the state had to give immigrants covered under the program. Blocking the program just in that state was enough to address those harms, Feigenbaum said, so a nationwide injunction was not necessary.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed Sauer on whether his opposition to a universal injunction in the citizen birthright case could lead to requiring every individual to file their own lawsuit in the case.

“The real concern, I think, is that your argument seems to turn our justice system, in my view at least, into a ‘catch me if you can’ kind of regime,” Jackson said, “where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights.”

Sauer countered that Jackson’s“catch me if you can” system negatively impacts the administration, pushing them to battle each and every jurisdiction where cases could pop up.

“I think the ‘catch me if you can’ problem operates in the opposite direction,” Sauer said, “where we have the government racing from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, having to sort of clear the table in order to implement a new policy.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett on March 4.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the court’s conservative wing, repeatedly pressed President Donald Trump’s attorney about why the government is avoiding the merits of the birthright citizenship case.

Her line of questioning drew an important concession from Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who acknowledged the legal arguments defending the merits of Trump’s order were “novel” and “sensitive.”

“So this one isn’t clear cut on the merits,” Barrett asked.

Sauer agreed.

Barrett also pressed Sauer on why the government is opposed to a nationwide injunction but generally willing to accept a class-action judgment that would likely have the same effect.
“Why does the government care?” Barrett asked.

Sauer responded with two points: First, securing a class action can be more difficult. Second, a class action judgement would require challengers to put more skin the fight. In other words, if the members of class action lost, they would collectively also be bound by the decision the same way the government is.

Conservative justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh dug into the practical challenges of implementing President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order if the nationwide injunctions were rolled back.

The justices will be key in deciding the case.

Barrett focused on the arguments put forward by the blue states challenging Trump’s order: that even if the policy is blocked within their borders, allowing it to move forward in other states would cause harm to the plaintiff states because of the way people move from one state to another.

Kavanaugh brought up the 30-day “ramp up” period the Trump order lays out before it goes into effect.

He interjected repeatedly when Solicitor General D. John Sauer couldn’t give him specifics he was seeking on how the order would work logistically once that period ran out.

Pressed about what hospitals and states do about a newborn covered under Trump’s order, Sauer tried to argue that the order puts the onus on federal officials to implement it. They’re tasked with refusing to accept certain citizenship documents from the children the Trump order exempts from birthright citizenship.

“How are they going to do that?” Kavanaugh asked.

Federal officials will “figure it out,” Sauer said.

“How?” Kavanaugh pressed.

You can imagine “a number of ways” Sauer offered.

“Such as?” Kavanaugh hammered.

Sauer tried again to lay out hypothetically how enforcement would work, but with Kavanaugh continuing to press him, Sauer blamed courts for pausing the ramp-up period that would have allowed the agencies to work out these policies.“They’re only going to have 30 days to do this. You think they get it together in time?” Kavanaugh said.

New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum is speaking on behalf of the states and cities challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting birthright citizenship.

Among his clients are more than 20 states, the District of Columbia, and the county and city of San Francisco.

This isn’t Feigenbaum’s first time in the well of the ornate courtroom. Having served as the Garden State’s solicitor general for nearly five years, he successfully argued a case before the high court: a 2023 dispute over whether New Jersey could leave a longstanding port-policing compact it had with New York.

Two years earlier, he argued – and lost – a major case involving the federal government’s use of eminent domain to build a pipeline in the state.

A 2014 graduate of Harvard Law School, Feigenbaum clerked for Justice Elena Kagan and later worked in private practice before joining the New Jersey attorney general’s office.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett pushed Solicitor General D. John Sauer to say the government will abide by court rulings – but the administration’s top appellate attorney wouldn’t fully commit to the idea.

Sauer said it was the Justice Department’s “longstanding policy of the Department of Justice” to respect appeals court precedents, but that “there are circumstances when it is not a categorical practice.”

“Really,” Barrett asked.

“We generally, as it was phrased to me, generally respect circuit precedent, but not necessarily in every case,” Sauer said.

Barrett continued to challenge Sauer, saying she wasn’t asking about enforcing “a case from 1955 and you think it’s time for it to be challenged.”

“I’m talking about this week, the Second Circuit holds that the executive order is unconstitutional,” she said. “What do you do the next day or the next week?”

“Generally, we follow,” Sauer responded.

Barrett continued, “so, you’re still saying generally?”

“Yes,” Sauer said.

Supreme Court Associate Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

President Donald Trump’s top appellate attorney faced at times devastating questions from the liberal wing of the Supreme Court during the first round of questioning about the practically of allowing the administration to enforce its ban on birthright citizenship.

The court’s three-justice liberal bloc – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – pressed Sauer aggressively on the administration’s position that the case is only about limiting the scope of lower court injunctions that blocked Trump for implementing his policy.

“If you win this challenge and say there is no nationwide injunction,” Kagan said, “then I can’t see how an individual who is not being treated equitably would have any ability to bring the substantive question to us.”

In other words, Kagan suggested, the Trump administration would require everyone potentially affected by the order to file their own suit. But the court’s three liberals are well short of a majority.

And many of the court’s conservatives have appeared less concerned about the potential practical impact. In early questioning, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh all signaled at certain points that they might potentially side with Trump.

One exception was Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who pressed Sauer on the practical implications of allowing the order to take effect. But Barrett, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh often ask difficult questions of both sides.

Solicitor General John Sauer argued that federal courts who rejected Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship did so by “snap judgments,” failing to address the underlying arguments in the case.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed Sauer on courts finding that the administration was violating “not only precedent, but the plain meaning of the Constitution.”

“Respectfully, I think what we have are lower courts making snap judgments on the merits that ignore the fundamental principle of the 14th Amendment,” Sauer said, “that it was about giving citizenship to the children of slaves, not to the children of illegal immigrants who really were not even very discreet class at the time.”

“And there were some people in Congress who argued against the 14th Amendment just because of that,” Sotomayor replied, “because it would give citizenship to gypsies.”

Sauer argued that “domicile” was the “key criteria.”

“And it got rejected repeatedly,” Sotomayor said of that argument.

“You claim that there is absolutely no constitutional way to stop … a president from an unconstitutional act,” Sotomayor concluded.

Chief Justice John Roberts bailed the solicitor general out as he was struggling with a series of tough questions about how long, under his theory, it would take to issue a ruling protecting people nationwide from an illegal presidential policy.

Roberts offered the example of the TikTok ban case earlier this year to suggest that the high court can act quickly when it needs to.The court has been accused of moving too slow, such as in the Trump criminal immunity case last year.

But Solicitor General D. John Sauer was eager to agree with Roberts’ suggestion that, even without the universal injunction tool being available to lower courts, the high court could settle major legal questions nationwide on a quick timeframe.

Justice Elena Kagan followed up on the point to say the government could still delay, or put off altogether, such a nationwide ruling coming from the Supreme Court. Kagan argued that if the administration kept losing at lower courts, there would be “no incentive” for the government to take the case to the Supreme Court, as long as those lower courts were only be able to block the policy for individuals plaintiffs.

”If I were in your shoes, there’s no way I’d approach the Supreme Court with this case,” Kagan said.To guarantee the merits question reaches the Supreme Court, “You need somebody to lose, but no one is going to lose in this case.”