Mike Johnson pushes Congress to challenge birthright citizenship ruling

The June 30 ruling held that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Congress should pursue a legislative “fix” to birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court ruling on President Donald Trump’s executive order, and said Republicans were “looking at all angles” while arguing that “birthright tourism” has “devalued” the 14th Amendment.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, and the decision also narrowed the use of universal injunctions in the underlying litigation. That left Trump’s order, signed on January 20, 2025, without a path to take effect, after multiple federal courts had already blocked it.

Johnson cannot change that result on his own. As speaker, he can push the House agenda, pressure Republicans, and move legislation into the debate, but he cannot rewrite the Citizenship Clause by parliamentary force. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, says that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens. The Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark remains the leading precedent reading that language to cover children born on U.S. soil to noncitizen parents.

Any ordinary law narrowing birthright citizenship would collide with the Constitution almost immediately. Congress could pass a statute, but courts would have to test it against the Citizenship Clause and the century-old precedent that has anchored the rule for generations. The only durable way to change birthright citizenship would be a constitutional amendment, which means two-thirds support in both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states, a standard far beyond a simple House vote.

Immigrant-rights groups and many Democrats hailed the decision as a victory for immigrant families and American democracy. Trump called the ruling bad for the country and urged Congress to act, while Johnson and other Republicans shifted quickly from executive confrontation to legislative threat-making.