Justice Samuel Alito is warning that one of the Supreme Court’s latest decisions could reshape America for generations.
In a forceful dissent, Alito called the Court’s 5-4 ruling on birthright citizenship “one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court,” arguing that the majority has embraced an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that was never intended by its authors.
“The Court has made a serious mistake,” Alito wrote.
According to Alito, the ruling effectively rewards birth tourism by granting automatic U.S. citizenship to children born to foreign nationals who may have entered the country solely to give birth.
He argued that the consequences extend far beyond immigration policy.
Alito warned that a child born in the United States to parents from a hostile foreign nation could grow up overseas, never live a day in America, develop allegiance to another country, and still retain full U.S. citizenship, complete with an American passport and constitutional protections.
“The Court’s interpretation also has national-security implications,” he wrote.
At the heart of Alito’s dissent is the Constitution’s language requiring that those born in the United States be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country. He argued that many children born to foreign nationals are, by law, citizens of their parents’ home countries at birth and therefore owe allegiance to a foreign power.
He pointed to Mexico as one example, noting that Mexican law grants citizenship by descent and imposes civic obligations, including potential military service and National Guard duties.
For Alito, that means such individuals are not exclusively subject to U.S. jurisdiction in the constitutional sense envisioned by the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment.
He also rejected the idea that correcting the Court’s interpretation would require stripping citizenship from millions of people already born in the United States.
Instead, he placed responsibility on decades of immigration policies that, in his view, encouraged illegal immigration by signaling that immigration laws would not be consistently enforced.
The dissent also highlighted the scale of recent immigration. Alito cited data showing that the foreign-born population in the United States increased by roughly three million people in just nine months between mid-2023 and early 2024, arguing that much of the growth was driven by unauthorized migrants receiving temporary protections.
Justice Clarence Thomas filed a separate dissent, likewise criticizing the majority’s reasoning. Thomas argued that the Court relied on outdated English common law rooted in monarchy rather than the actual text and history of the Constitution.
Alito echoed that concern, writing that American citizenship is “precious” and should not be governed by what he described as a medieval rule inherited from the British crown.
Rather than carefully analyzing the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, he argued, the Court relied too heavily on prior precedent while ignoring the Constitution’s original meaning.
Alito concluded with a stark warning.
“The Fourteenth Amendment does not include the rule the Court now imposes on the country,” he wrote. “In my judgment, the Court has made a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future.”