30 Jun 2026 Black Conservatives Denounce Supreme Court Decision on Birthright Citizenship

Today the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reconsider the broad interpretation of birthright citizenship that has governed U.S. immigration policy for decades, rejecting President Donald Trump’s effort to limit automatic citizenship for children born to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the country.

Horace Cooper

Project 21 Chairman Horace Cooper, who once taught constitutional law at George Mason University and was a senior counsel to U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, disagrees strongly with SCOTUS’s decision:

Today the Supreme Court issued a flawed 6–3 decision that misinterprets the text and historical context of our Constitution and the critical 14th amendment adopted at the conclusion the Civil War. The ruling ignores that the whole purpose of the 14th amendment was to ensure that the newly freed black men and women were treated as citizens by America and by the states where they reside.

I highly commend Justice Clarence Thomas for his masterful dissent, which stands as a defense of the true rule of law and the value of American citizenship.

Today’s ruling has allowed for the repurposing of the Fourteenth Amendment to fulfill modern political projects never intended by the drafters of the 14th. As Thomas’s dissent rightly notes, the Citizenship Clause was designed to guarantee the long-overdue rights of freed slaves—not to create a sweeping, automatic right to citizenship for the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens.

Today’s ruling issues a license for enemies of America and opportunists alike to find any means necessary to get to America and stay long enough to have a child who automatically becomes a citizen. By expanding this clause far beyond its original public meaning, the Court’s majority has fundamentally devalued what it means to be an American citizen and also jeopardized the safety of all Americans.

Linda Lee Tarver

Additionally, Dr. Linda Lee Tarver—a Project 21 ambassador who once served as Michigan Civil Rights Commissioner—says:

As the descendant of formerly enslaved Americans, I recognize that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in the aftermath of the the American Civil War to guarantee citizenship to those who had been denied both liberty and legal recognition in their own country. The historical record demonstrates that the principal purpose of the amendment was to secure the citizenship of the children of former slaves and others fully subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

I support birthright citizenship as originally understood and intended by the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, I do not believe that the amendment was designed to confer automatic citizenship upon the children of temporary visitors or those who entered the country unlawfully.

Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence appropriately reminds us that constitutional interpretation must be grounded in text, history and tradition—not in policy preferences or modern assumptions. Regardless of one’s views on immigration policy, preserving the original meaning of the Constitution and respecting the separation of powers remain essential to maintaining our constitutional republic.