Thoughts on the Close of the 2025-26 US Supreme Court Term
By Denise Diskin, Litigation Director
We at CLS, and many of you, waited months for the outcome of Trump v. Barbara, the case challenging President Trump’s Executive Order 14160 limiting birthright citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause explicitly affords citizenship to those “born or naturalized in the United States,” regardless of the immigration status of their parents – language so clear that many lawyers and advocates were stunned as the term stretched on without a decision. When it finally arrived on June 30, we were stunned again to see a 6-3 decision, not the unanimous decision we believe the Constitution demanded.
It is disheartening to see the U.S. Supreme Court be unable to unanimously agree on basic Constitutional language, and to see three Justices choose anti-immigrant racism over their duty to honor equality under the law. They argued that “born” does not actually mean “born,” but instead means “domiciled,” invoking the post-Civil War history of extending citizenship to Black Americans to argue against citizenship for some children of immigrants. In our view, that reasoning pits two communities with shared experiences of racism against one another and weakens our collective resistance to the Trump administration and its agenda of white dominance.
And the fight has not ended. President Trump has since issued a new Executive Order attacking birthright citizenship, defying the majority of the US Supreme Court. That new order has already been overturned by a second court and is very likely to rise to the US Supreme Court again later this year or next.
The effect of these efforts is to sow fear and distrust of immigrant families in the United States and create an environment where anyone with brown skin and immigrant parents are suspect Americans. As a legal organization working with Black and Latinx Washingtonians to dismantle incarceration and the oppression of the immigration system we resist that fear and distrust.
We are continuing to file lawsuits, making sure the courts hear from our clients about the damage done by incarceration, ICE violence, and farmworker abuses. But we also recognize that our work must increasingly be centered in the power of our communities, not in the courts. True justice lies in our connections to each other and the change we make together, in communities all over Washington. We won’t give up, and we are so glad you’re with us.
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