Clarence Thomas on SCOTUS Ruling: 14th Amendment Has Been ‘Repurposed for Political Projects’



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by John Binder 30 Jun 2026

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the principal dissenting opinion in Trump v. Barbara, where the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s executive order barring birthright American citizenship for the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens and temporary visa holders is a violation of the 14th Amendment.

In his dissenting opinion, Thomas writes that “both the Civil Rights Act and the Citizenship Clause guaranteed citizenship to persons born and domiciled in the United States regardless of their race.”

“Neither guaranteed citizenship to persons who were not domiciled in the United States,” Thomas writes:

Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans. They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority. They “fought and bled in the same battles,” “gained and gloried in the same victories,” and were “liable to be called upon to defend [America] in time of war” alongside every other citizen. The Citizenship Clause thus guaranteed them the “dignity and glory of American citizenship,” so as to ensure that they would never be treated as second-class under the law.
[Emphasis added]

The same could not be said for the children of foreign temporary visitors. Foreign temporary visitors were attached to their home country, lacked similar bonds to this country, and would not be called upon in time of war. Americans, consistent with their settler ethos, believed that citizens were the people who called a place home. Accordingly, domicile—a person’s legal home—played a key role in both state and national citizenship in America. A person was a “citizen” of the state where he had his “domicil.” When foreigners temporarily visited, their “national character” was unchanged. Such visitors were “strangers,” not “subjects.” A person born here but domiciled in a foreign land was therefore considered “as much a stranger to the country as his father.” [Emphasis added]

In particular, Thomas argues that the 14th Amendment’s phrase “not subject to any foreign power” in regard to guaranteeing citizenship to those born in the U.S. “excluded from citizenship children of foreign temporary visitors, who were subject to the power of their home nation.”

“The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially unconstitutional the President’s Order excluding from citizenship the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens,” Thomas writes:

In doing so, the Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support. Because many potential applications of the President’s Order are consistent with the original public meaning of the Citizenship Clause, I respectfully dissent. [Emphasis added]

The case is Trump v. Barbara, No. 25–365 in the Supreme Court of the United States.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...t-citizenship/