The US high court has ruled in favor of two state laws that prohibit trans athletes from participating in women's collegiate sports. A decision that represents a victory for the Trump administration in its persecution of trans people and that will have a national impact, as it sets a precedent affecting the rights of the community across the country. The conservative supermajority established by the American president has once again asserted its weight with its six votes.The rules in question, approved by the Republican states of Idaho and West Virginia, had been challenged by two trans athletes who were left unable to compete due to their application. In their appeals, the two girls had argued that their exclusion from women's collegiate teams due to being trans constituted a violation of Title IX – which regulates discrimination – and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees equality for all before the law.
Judicial defeat for Trump: the Supreme Court upholds the right to birthright citizenship
With six votes in favor and three against, the high court confirms that every person born on US territory is a full citizen
WashingtonThe Supreme Court of the United States has overturned Donald Trump's attempt to override the limits of presidential power and eliminate the right to birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. By a majority of six judges in favor and three against, the high court has ruled that the executive order with which the American president had sought to revoke one of the fundamental pillars of a country built on immigration is unconstitutional. Unlike other countries, in the United States citizenship is acquired by virtue of being born on American soil, regardless of the nationality or legal status of the parents.
Revoking this right would not only have been a blow to one of the country's most essential features, but would also have distorted the fight against slavery that underpinned it. The amendment stating that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens" was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War to annul a previous Supreme Court decision that excluded persons of African descent from the right to citizenship. During the past hearing in April, both the Trump administration and the three conservative judges who today sided with it argued that the historical origin of the right, initially obtained for freed slaves, was now not applicable to the children of immigrants currently born in the United States.
In the dissenting opinions of the ruling, drafted by Clarence Thomas and spanning 91 pages, this idea is re-emphasized. The magistrate describes the decision as "another chapter in the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to guarantee the equal rights of freed slaves, but which, in contrast, has been reused for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support." According to the logic of the three conservative judges and the Trump administration, unlike other rights that are universally and cumulatively based, this one would be exclusionary and exclusive.
Conversely, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, who was tasked with drafting the majority opinion, recalled: "Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights, to participate freely in our political community." "The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended this promise to 'all persons born free in this land.' Today we uphold that promise," he emphasized.
As the head of the high court points out in the text, revoking citizenship rights would have meant that many newborns from vulnerable families – including those legally residing in the country – would have been excluded from many benefits related to access to health and food. Not to mention the real risk that many newborns would end up in legal limbo or directly as stateless, which would automatically expose them to the risk of deportation.
On January 20, 2025, Trump signed the executive order to revoke citizenship rights and thus accelerate his anti-immigration campaign. The order was quickly blocked after more than twenty states and several groups fighting for the rights of migrants filed lawsuits against it. Since then, the legal litigation escalated until it reached the Supreme Court's table.
The US president had defended the order as a way to put an end to what are known as "anchor babies", the children of undocumented immigrants who, upon being born in the United States, obtain citizenship. Republicans and other conservative groups say that undocumented immigrants use this route to obtain papers more easily, even though the parents continue to run the risk of deportation at any time and only have facilities to start processing the green card (permanent residency permit) when the child turns 21.
However resounding the blow to the US president may be, it is not a great surprise. During the presentation of oral arguments in April, at which the US president unusually appeared in person, a good part of the Supreme Court's bench already seemed skeptical about the idea of revoking the Fourteenth Amendment.
Although it is a decision that has been celebrated by groups defending migrants, last week the high court gifted the Republican two major victories on immigration matters. On the one hand, it ruled that the government can end the temporary protection status currently enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians. On the other hand, it gave the green light for the right to asylum at the border to be denied. The bench ruled that border patrol can physically prevent immigrants from crossing the border, even if they are asylum seekers.