The Supreme Court handed down the final decisions of its term on Tuesday and they reflected what we have seen all year: It is a very conservative court, and although it usually will rule in favor of President Trump, there are times when it will say no to unprecedented claims of presidential power.
On the last day of the term, the court pleased conservatives by allowing states to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in sports corresponding to their gender identity, but, importantly, it also invalidated Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship.
On culture war issues, the Supreme Court again showed that it is solidly conservative. In West Virginia vs. B.P.J., the justices ruled 6-3 that state governments may bar transgender girls and women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote the opinion for the court and concluded: “The Equal Protection Clause allows schools to maintain separate teams for female and male athletes. Schools may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ teams based on biological sex.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a vehement dissent said that ultimately the case depended on a factual question: Does allowing transgender girls and women to play in sports that correspond to their gender identity give them an unfair competitive advantage? Sotomayor said that the court should have sent the case back to the lower courts to determine this, explaining that “West Virginia, and any other state actor, can deny B.P.J. and others like her these experiences simply because it thinks they have an inherent athletic advantage, even if the facts show that they do not. In the end, to the court, the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious.”
This case fits a larger pattern as the six conservative justices have shown their consistent hostility to rights for transgender individuals. In March, in Chiles vs. Salazar, the court was clear that a Colorado law prohibiting conversion therapy for gay, lesbian and transgender youth was unconstitutional. Last year, the court upheld a Tennessee law prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender youth and allowed Trump to bar transgender individuals from serving in the military.
But the Supreme Court on Tuesday also handed a rare loss to the president in the area of immigration law, striking down his effort to limit birthright citizenship. Up until now, the court had repeatedly sided with Trump’s efforts to restrict immigration. For example, last week, the court ruled in favor of Trump in a pair of 6-3 decisions that allowed him to end temporary protected status for Haitians and Syrians, likely leading to summary deportation of more than 300,000 individuals, and to also bar individuals from coming to the United States seeking amnesty.
But on Tuesday, in Trump vs. Barbara, the court declared unconstitutional Trump’s executive order issued on Jan. 20, 2025, his first day back in office, which provides that only those born to citizens or those with green cards are U.S. citizens. Under this executive order, a baby would not be a citizen if it was born to an undocumented immigrant or to a person in the U.S. on a visa.
This should have been an easy case for the Supreme Court. When the Constitution was penned in 1787, the founders followed English law and determined that everyone born in the country was deemed a citizen. This was followed until the Supreme Court’s tragic 1857 decision in Dred Scott vs. Sandford, which held that enslaved individuals were property of their owners and that they were not U.S. citizens, even if they had been born in the country.
The first sentence of the first section of the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, was meant to expressly and unquestionably overrule this decision. It declares that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
In 1898, in United States vs. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled that this means what it says and that all born in the U.S. are American citizens, with the limited exception of babies born to foreign diplomats and to soldiers of invading armies.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — writing for a majority that included Justices Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson — traced exactly this history in striking down the Trump executive order. The surprise in light of this history was that four conservative justices would have upheld the constitutionality of the president’s action, though Kavanaugh would have found that it violates a federal statute.
The case is enormously important for the approximately 250,000 babies each year who would be denied citizenship under the executive order. And if Trump could redefine the Constitution’s definition of citizenship, he could then potentially could do this retroactively, revoking the citizenship of millions of individuals who were born to parents here on visas or who were undocumented.
Quite significantly, this decision, like the ruling in February striking down Trump’s tariffs, shows that the conservative court is at times willing to rule against him. But it also comes just one day after the court greatly expanded presidential powers to fire any executive branch official. By my count, there have been 31 rulings since Jan. 20, 2025, that have involved challenges to Trump’s actions, most on the emergency docket, and the court has ruled in his favor 25 times.
Still, the decisions on birthright citizenship and tariffs should not be minimized: The court demonstrated that it remains an essential guardrail to protect our democracy.
Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of the UC Berkeley Law School.
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