SCOTUS Rejects Trump's Bid to End Birthright Citizenship

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0:38Is that water damage? Who do I even call? That's where Thumbtack comes in. Just upload a photo or voice note and it uses AI-powered search to match you with the right top-rated local pro. So instead of guessing, you get clarity and can hire with confidence. For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the right pro today. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. On this final day of the Supreme Court term, we got several major rulings, including on money in politics. That's coming up. But we begin with the clear and final loss for Trump on a key issue. The justices flatly rejecting his infamous bid to try to rewrite the Constitution and change the very definition of citizenship in this country.

1:23Now, to remind you, Trump had launched a Hail Mary on this issue in his second term, the kind of thing that he didn't even try in the first term, and that was not going to work if the law were applied, because he wanted to see if he could get away with just writing his own executive order and canceling part of the Constitution to ban birthright citizenship. Now, this was dead on arrival by any legal logic, because presidents can't just override the Constitution, otherwise it would be a meaningless document. Trump critics noting that he had wasted a lot of time and legal capital leading up to this loser of a case and this loss today with a court rebuke that made waves.

2:05The Supreme Court has just handed down a second major decision this morning, this one on birthright citizenship. Emphatically rejecting the president's attempt with an executive order to redefine what it means to be a citizen in this country. For more than 100 years, the rule has been simple. If you're born in America, you are an American, and it looks like that won't change. So as we celebrate today's ruling, I have a message for President Trump. You may try to redefine what it means to be an American, and you will fail. Today, the Constitution won. The American people won. A major loss. So what are we doing here?

2:46Well, I'm going to walk you through it. This is not one of those cases that's super complicated or requires a lot of legal intrigue. This loss for Trump means that current citizenship rights hold. So there's actually no change. He was trying to change things in a manner that was flatly unlawful, and he failed. So if someone's born in this country, they are a citizen. And that's, by the way, the core promise of America. A citizenship which is not bound by a test of, say, heritage or race or religion, which we've seen historically in some parts of the world, but rather that American promise, that thing that we talk about that wasn't always perfectly executed but was the promise and the Statue of Liberty talk and the Nation of Immigrants talk, all of that being built in the idea that if you're born here, you're a citizen here, period.

3:40Republican-appointed Chief Justice writing today, Citizenship was the right to have rights. Freely participate in our political community. The framers extended that promise to every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today. That was always going to be the only logical legal outcome for this case. If the court did its job, which is to apply, first, the plain language and meaning of the Constitution, and second, past precedence. Because if you're wondering as you watch the news, is this a new thing? Have we ever looked into this? We have in many different details. Other cases were somewhat more nuanced because we didn't have a president trying to just cancel the Constitution this way.

4:22But if the courts do what I'm telling you is their job, look at the plain meaning of the law and prior precedence, this was never close. In fact, it's kind of striking that this court even took the case. In a different era, it might have simply let stand and lower courts ruling against a blatantly unlawful executive order. How did we get here? If you're doing the count here on the last day of the term, the majority was six. So even though there's a majority of Republican appointees on the court, they're going against a Republican president, as you see there. Three Republicans and three Democratic appointees in the majority ruling against Trump.

5:00Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, as you see, went so far as to dissent and make what are basically legally fantastical claims that they would actually support a president being able to unilaterally change the Constitution. They would allow Trump, they say, by executive fiat to essentially end birthright citizenship. And if you're wondering, gosh, would they let a President Obama or a future President AOC slash out parts of the Constitution that they don't like for their ideological reasons? Well, That's why so many members of this court face a consistency, credibility, and sometimes self-dealing corruption crisis.

5:37They're not credible, some of them. Now, if you dive into the details, there was also some debate about whether this citizenship right is actually rooted in the Constitution. And I will read you that passage in a moment to remind you, but a debate over whether it's there or is it rooted in some other branch of government. Kavanaugh said, well, maybe Congress could enact new legislation establishing exceptions to this very citizenship that the court upheld. Now, on the one hand, that could be a kind of musing. Maybe Congress can do something. But in what's going on today, and that coming from a Trump appointee, it also could be read as kind of the court upholding a law, a rule, while also brainstorming how a MAGA Congress could help undo the very thing they're upholding.

6:22And judges aren't really supposed to do that. Again, as I'm saying, to be as fair as possible, it kind of depends on how you interpret what Kavanaugh wrote. But I can tell you that the president who appointed him, Donald Trump, today saw it that way, posting about that very idea, which is also probably dead on arrival in this Congress, which is now adjourned. But Trump has been invested in this case from the start. He even attended oral arguments, which he can choose to do, but it's a rarity for presidents. We can now report today for the first time that he was sitting in and watching his own loss, because he badly lost this case with Trump appointees voting against him, something we know he seems to take personally, even though the whole point is it's not supposed to go by just party or appointment.

7:02So the court is upholding the Constitution on this issue tonight. Now, I told you this one's pretty clear. I'll remind you the words. You might have seen them in school or in the news. All persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are citizens of the U.S. Doesn't leave a lot of room for miscommunication. If you are born or naturalized here, you're a citizen here. Jurisdiction thereof is the legalese about the fact that you are under the jurisdiction of the place that you are. The chief justice, and this is kind of as close as you'll get as shade or a kind of a diss from judges who are notoriously pretty careful, even when they're sparring with each other.

7:41the Chief Justice, in a sign of basically shading how off the Trump argument was, said, well, if you want to know what that means, just read it. And he quoted it verbatim in the ruling today, children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the U.S. are under the Constitution citizens at birth. In other words, sometimes I've told you politics can feel like a lot of people debating a book that they haven't read. It's like a book club, but we haven't done the reading. Internet politics can certainly feel like that sometimes, but also if you go to a dinner or a barbecue, you're like, wait, what do they know?

8:22What do they think? And sometimes that problem reaches all the way up to the Supreme Court, where what I'm telling you, not my view, not some critics' view, but the majority of the court sign on to that opinion, including the Republican Chief Justice, and they're basically shading Trump and his three would-be enablers in dissent to say, if you read the Constitution, we wouldn't even be here today. And with that, we turn to someone who's read it more than once, Andrew Weissman, former FBI General Counsel, Mueller prosecutor. Your thoughts on what I'm calling that sort of light shade, and that maybe we shouldn't even be here, but we are here with at least a robust majority, reminding everyone, including the president.

9:03The Constitution says what it says, and it's the final word. My take of what happened today in the birthright citizenship case is that this is nothing to applaud. Obviously, it is great that it came out the way it did. It is affirming something that everyone listening to this and for generations people have understood to be in the Constitution. But we got darn close to having a ruling in the other way. The one way in which I take slight exception to the introduction you gave, Ari, is that on the constitutional issue, whether Trump was trying to do in his executive order comports or violates the Constitution.

9:57So just looking at the Constitution, not the statutory issue, the court is five to four. Brett Kavanaugh says and joins the other three conservative justices in saying that the Constitution permits what Donald Trump did here. And so on that, that means that's five to four. We are one justice away from this case coming out totally differently. And I think it's useful. Let me translate it back as a colloquy. We've got plenty of time for you. You're saying, of course, it's good that the Constitution held today, but it's such a bare minimum. And it's so fanciful, ridiculous, illogically unlawful to even be here and reassert that, that that itself is a problem for the for the republic, even though you're not saying that it's bad that the Constitution helped.

10:52Absolutely. Much better said than the way I put it. It's worth remembering that when this case first bubbled up about a year ago, the first district judge who heard this case was appointed by Ronald Reagan. It's worth remembering how far we've come that on this constitutional issue it was five to four. This is what the Reagan district judge said. I've been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order. Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made? That's a direct quote from the court.

11:41And when you think about in a year, Donald Trump has made what is a fringe theory seem and in fact almost was the law because we were, as I said, it was five justices who rejected his position. That means there were four who said constitutionally he would be able to do this. I hear you. I mean, I think, again, I think if viewers who know Andrew to be very sober and judicious, fitting for a judicial ruling segment, but they can hear your concern, which is why we quoted Kavanaugh, of course, in the setup, that I want people to understand. Roberts and the court held. And so this is dead. This is over this particular thing.

12:28But you're speaking to a what I would call a. A deceitful lawlessness with all due respect by members of this court, whereas I mentioned they would not afford reading something backwards for its opposite meaning. They wouldn't afford that or anything close to that for presidents that didn't appoint them or they disagree with. And so then you get back to the idea that the court is not purely as, shall we say, as political as Congress, because we can point you to a trademark ruling here or the Garcia ruling there that's unanimous. But it's getting worse and you're concerned. And then I ask you not to do doomsday.

13:06I'm not as judicious as you, but but I, you know, I try to do my part. Are we looking at a block of at least now four justices who, at the risk of professional embarrassment, like you said, disagreeing with the Reagan justice, disagreeing with the plain letter of the Constitution, disagreeing with what up means up and born here means born here, and they'll risk all that embarrassment to lose a case? What would they do in an election case or a case about power if they had one more vote? It seems to be one of the cautions that you're sharing. Absolutely. And what I would say is that if you look at this decision, don't sort of rest on your laurels and think, oh, we escaped, you know, a disastrous consequence.

13:52The Supreme Court is so on the ballot in not just the midterms, but in presidential elections going forward and not just in the short term and the long term. To me, that is the take home of this decision, as well as many of the decisions that came out today and yesterday, where what the Supreme Court is doing in places really does not look like the practice of law. it looks it looks so political um and so people i think even though this case you know barely um came out the right way it's really worth people remembering that when it comes time to vote what you think uh should be the rule of law in this country yeah i hear you on that and we were you know the interesting part of going through this era with these kind of jobs is like oh we want to hear Andrew on this.

14:50That's what we thought about today. We'll give you time first. And you're concerned, even though this isn't what we might call a bad news day for the rule of law, you're concerned about how close it is. And folks who rely on your judgment can take that for what it is. The Speaker of the House was asked about this today. He's been on this program back before he was Speaker, talked about how he's an originalist on the Constitution. Here's what he said today. Oh, dear. Here we go. Well. This is real time. I need to read the opinion, okay? But obviously that's, I mean, you could say that's a textualist, originalist view.

15:29However, I do think that this has been grossly abused in recent years. Andrew? So the court is not supposed to be deciding, and the majority did not decide this as a policy matter. This wasn't an issue of, oh, should we have more or less immigration? Who should we allow into this country? Who should we not? This was a question of how to interpret the Constitution. So I understand the speakers trying to deflect and saying, you know, as a policy matter, I'm not sure I would agree with this. That's not what courts are supposed to do here. And so, you know, I think that your point that Justice Kavanaugh was trying to say, oh, there might be a statutory solution.

16:18That's not so. With the five justices saying that the Supreme Court is saying that in the Constitution, that if you are born here, you are a citizen, period, the end, that cannot be changed by statute. Right. And do you think, by the way, that he was on the level? Do you think that was on the level or do you think he was kind of saying, hey, to my political friends on the right? I think what he was saying is that his view was that there was a statutory problem with what President Trump was doing, that his executive order violated not the Constitution. He says that's fine, but it violated a congressional statute.

17:00And so he's saying in his view that the way that could be remedied is to change the congressional statute because then the Constitution does not prohibit what Donald Trump was trying to do. But just to be clear, so people are not worried about this, he did not get four other people agreeing with him. So the five justices say, absolutely not. This is in the Constitution. That means Congress cannot change it. Right, exactly. I mentioned there were a couple other big decisions, because people may remember at the end of the term, that's when you tend to get them. And you've agreed to say we're going to add Professor Murray and continue on those other new cases.

17:39You'll hear about them as viewers for the first time. And we turn to those in 90 seconds.

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19:11Andrew Weissman is back with us and joining us is law professor from NYU, MSNOW analyst Melissa Murray. We started with birthright citizenship. The other big cases today came down about the trans athletes debate and campaign finance restrictions, which are further diluted. Also big cases here, which tend to come at the final days of the term. Professor, your thoughts on those two cases? Sure. This was a bad decisions term for this court. I know that many people in the media are talking about the birthright citizenship case as a win. I think it's a much more muted victory for all of the reasons that you and Andrew have suggested.

19:50The 14th Amendment is hanging on by a single vote. I am even more alarmed by the decisions on trans athletes. To be very clear, this is a very narrow decision. The court held that Title IX, which is the anti-discrimination law, the federal anti-discrimination law that applies in the educational context, permits schools and states to ban trans women and girls from athletics. It also said that there was no constitutional problem if these bans went into effect to limit trans athletes from participating in women's and girls sports. That's a very modest decision on its own. What alarms me is that this decision is going to be basically harnessed by this administration and pushed to its most extreme length.

20:35And the example that I like to use is what happened with Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard, which was the affirmative action case from just a few years ago. That, too, was a very limited decision that only applied in the context of higher education admissions. But in the hands of this administration, they have argued that SFFA versus Harvard licenses the dismantling of DEI initiatives in private institutions like law firms and corporations. The Supreme Court never said anything like that. And so I think you have to understand this decision on trans athletes as having a broader impact because it's going to be immediately harnessed by this administration to further marginalize and render liminal trans people in everyday life.

21:16And I know that there will be feminists in the audience who will write in to me to tell me that any kind of SOP for trans people is a hedge against women's rights. I have to reiterate here that the constitutional jurisprudence that underpins the rights of trans people is the same jurisprudence that underpins the rights of women. So when we hobble and begin undermining that jurisprudence in the context of trans people, we are also doing it in the context of women. And we have to understand that our fates are linked. This is a terrible decision for the trans community. It is a terrible decision for anyone who cares about equality and who worries about what this administration will do about equality going forward.

21:57The campaign finance decision furthers... Let me slow you down because I asked you both, but now we're deep into that. So we'll hold the campaign finance for another minute. On the points you make there, the athlete issue was also seen politically as a kind of a wedge. Yeah. I think everybody knows how that works. And you're making the point that legally it could also work that way, that these are being brought to create a certain conflict, to rush, kind of almost rush the zone or rush the debate. And then you're saying you believe this court will then use that to go at other issues. In other words, even if hypothetically someone says they're...

22:31Go ahead. Be very clear. I think the administration is going to do that. I agree this is a wedge issue and we saw it in affirmative action. For years, affirmative action was challenged because it was, quote unquote, reverse discrimination against white people. That didn't get a lot of traction. It began to get traction when they began talking about it as minority-on-minority discrimination. The fact that Asians and Asian-Americans were discriminated against. They created a third group as a wedge. That's the same thing that's happening in the context of trans rights. creating this third group of women who are disproportionately impacted by efforts to provide equality for trans people.

23:05I worry that this decision, although it is a very narrow one on the part of this court, is going to be used by this administration, which has already launched a raft of executive orders further marginalizing the trans community, whether it is for health care or for their presence in public life. They will use this decision, the administration will, to continue that project. It will have real consequences for the trans community beyond sports and beyond the educational context. So then turning to the finance decision, which is the other big one today, and I'll go to Andrew and then back to the professor.

23:37You know, Andrew, a lot of times those money and politics decisions are understandably looked at through the red-blue lens of American politics. Of course, democracy is even deeper than that. It's also about people's rights to be represented well. And when you look at another set of rules that try to limit some of the big money, even beyond which party benefits, and there's headlines saying Republicans may benefit more, it also means that Democrats and the incumbents will be playing in a big money system where money matters even more. So if you are a voter who just wants less big money across the whole system, then you lose out.

24:16This is negative. In other words, we're seeing a system where you almost need to have billionaire backers and big money to go in what are significant races. Your view of that ruling today, Andrew? Absolutely. So just to quickly footstump on something Melissa said, because I agree with it so much, is I just need to point out that Justice Thomas in his concurrence described trans people as suffering from gender dysphoria, and this is a quote, that is a mental state that is the object of psychiatric treatment. That it's a mental state that is the object of psychiatric treatment and thus is not to be accorded heightened scrutiny.

24:59That's what we're dealing with. And that's, I think, very much Melissa's concern here. To the campaign finance, it is very hard to explain to the rest of the world what on God's green earth we are doing here. that it is so disproportionate in terms of giving power to the wealthy. And that can cut across political lines, Democratic and Republican. But this is a country where there's such enormous economic inequality. And this is one more step of this court, which has followed other courts, in freeing up the amount of money that can be poured into elections. And it really hurts the so-called little people in a way that other so-called Western democracies just don't have this system because they understand the pernicious effect of one person, one vote.

25:56And this is not really that. This is, you know, the person who has one million dollars gets a lot more votes in effect. And so this is part of a really growing trend of the Supreme Court to weigh in in favor of the wealthy. Professor? So I think one way to understand this decision is in tandem with what we saw in Louisiana versus Calais and in some of the Voting Rights Act cases. This is about electoral distortion, distorting the landscape in which our elections take place, in part by making the impact of corporate money so much more vast than the kind of small donor contributions that, for example, the Democratic Party has relied on for years.

26:40So this isn't going to have a massive impact right away, or at least I don't think it will. But when you think about it in tandem and the aggregate with the other things the court has done on voting rights in this term alone, then I think a bigger picture emerges. This is about distorting the landscape so that certain voters can't have their voices heard and that certain voters, because of their inability to contribute in those broad numbers the way corporations and millionaires and oligarchs can, to have their voices diminished as well. And that's part of a longstanding kind of project with this court.