Kate Shaw, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law, who has written on the Supreme Court and reproductive rights, said there’s “every reason to think that the fight for the future of birthright citizenship will resemble recent fights over federal constitutional protections for abortion.”
“The question isn’t whether conservatives will mobilize against birthright citizenship and Barbara, but whether progressives will also mobilize to defend the settled understanding of the Constitution’s citizenship clause — as they very much need to,” she said.
The president’s executive orders this week are evidence that Republicans will continue to push the envelope, said New York University law professor Melissa Murray.
“They’re going to keep pressing on this, whether it is incrementally or in big bursts,” she said. “These are attempting to rewrite the rules of birthright citizenship.”
Speakers at the recent convening, hosted by the Conservative Partnership Institute and the Immigration Accountability Project, included Gene Hamilton, president of America First Legal, and previously the president’s deputy White House counsel, Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation and Florida chief deputy attorney general Ryan Newman. John Eastman, who, before he helped Trump devise his bid to overturn the 2020 election, had spent decades pushing the cause, also addressed the room.
The president’s allies said they plan to make ending birthright citizenship a recurring topic at conferences and law schools where the next generation of lawyers will be trained. And even as the prospects of legislation remain slim, they are pressing lawmakers to introduce bills ranging from constitutional amendments to narrower measures targeting women who come to the U.S. just to give birth. They also view it as a moment to expand broader immigration enforcement efforts, to ramp up deportations and deter migration to the U.S.
“It was a success that we got as far as we did,” said Eastman, who directs the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. “And that conversation is now going on throughout the country, throughout the country by ordinary citizens and lawmakers and legislators and judges alike.”
For others, the long game is in the courts. They say birthright citizenship should be a litmus test for all future judicial nominees.
“We need nine [Justice Samuel] Alitos on the Supreme Court,” Davis said.
