Trump signs new orders on birthright citizenship despite Supreme Court precedent

President Trump has signed further executive orders aimed at restricting birthright citizenship in the United States, according to the Independent and BBC News. The orders come despite an existing Supreme Court ruling on the matter. GB News reports one order specifically targets birth tourism, framing the move as preparation for a legal battle with the Supreme Court.

Birthright citizenship - the principle that anyone born on US soil is a citizen - rests on the Fourteenth Amendment. The amendment was adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War to overturn the Dred Scott decision and guarantee citizenship to freed slaves. Its first section opens with the clause: all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.

The contested phrase is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof". The administration's position appears to be that children of parents unlawfully present, or present temporarily, are not subject to full US jurisdiction and therefore fall outside the amendment's scope. The Supreme Court addressed birthright citizenship in an earlier case, but the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment's framers intended it to apply to the children of non-citizens remains a live constitutional argument in some quarters.

The practical effect: if sustained, the orders would create a class of people born on US soil who are not US citizens. That is a category the country has not recognised in over a century.

What to watch: whether any state or organisation files suit, and whether the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case. The orders set the challenge; the Court decides whether to take it.