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WATCH Ranking Member Scanlon’s opening statement.

Ranking Member Mary Gay Scanlon

Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government

Hearing on “‘Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof’: Birthright Citizenship and the Fourteenth Amendment”

February 25, 2025

Mr. Chairman, since this is our first hearing of the new Congress, I’d like to start by saying that I’m looking forward to a vigorous exchange of ideas here in this committee room. 

And I imagine we’ll tackle some interesting – and thorny – legal disputes throughout this term.  

However, I have to admit, I don’t think today’s topic quite meets that expectation. 

Because, for more than a century, there have been few legal questions as open-and-shut as whether being born in the United States makes someone a United States citizen. 

I’ll skip ahead and tell you right now… it does. 

And frankly, to suggest otherwise is nothing but a blatant and disingenuous attempt to rewrite our nation’s history and the very words of the Constitution. 

Now, rewriting history and ignoring the rule of law has become a feature – not a bug – under the Trump Administration. 

But, it’s one that Congress has a constitutional obligation to prevent rather than enable.

So, why are our Republican colleagues questioning the plain and long-settled meaning of the birthright citizenship clause? 

Simply put, it’s because President Trump and his allies in Congress think there’s something to gain politically by stripping an entire group of American citizens of:

• their rights, 

• their votes, 

• their very identities – and turning them and their descendants into a permanent underclass.

They want to decide who they deem worthy of being a citizen of our country – and who isn’t – based on who their parents are and where their parents are from. 

And in an act of cynical irony, they want to – in essence – resurrect the shameful rationale behind the Dred Scott decision that the Fourteenth Amendment was written to reject once and for all.

Our history – our quest for a more perfect union – has always been about expanding opportunity and civic participation, not ripping it away. 

Broadening our electorate has been an important part of that progress, including through constitutional amendments that guarantee:

• citizenship, 

• enfranchisement regardless of race,

• women’s suffrage, and more. 

In doing so, we’ve sought to make our country and its government more representative, more fair – more perfect. 

That’s a goal – a vision – that all patriotic Americans should share.

Any attempt to radically reinterpret the Citizenship Clause serves only to further the goal of right-wing extremists – to unconstitutionally limit who can have a political voice in this country. 

Donald Trump’s unconstitutional executive order to end birthright citizenship – along with legislative efforts by Republicans in Congress to do the same – would drag us backwards. 

Ensuring a government that’s not for the people, but for some people. 

It’s the absolute antithesis of the promise of America. 

It’s been 150 years since the Fourteenth Amendment enshrined birthright citizenship into our Constitution. 

In that time, the United States has been made better by the contributions of Americans born here to immigrant parents – regardless of where their parents came from or their parents’ citizenship status. 

 

Overturning birthright citizenship would hurt our nation – and deeply imperil our ability to continue striving for a better future. 

It would impact all Americans by creating a logistical nightmare.

Bureaucracy would invade our maternity wards with states and hospitals being forced to investigate which babies do, or don’t, qualify for citizenship.  

 

Most troubling, though – ending birthright citizenship would create a legal caste system based on the status of one’s parents. 

Instead of citizens, the U.S. would develop a permanent underclass of stateless, not-legally-recognized subjects, who could be exploited or deported at the mercy of a political majority. 

That would be a twisted reflection of the intended purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment.  

Because the language chosen by the Amendment’s framers in the aftermath of the Civil War was to prevent this kind of caste system from ever returning. 

So, if our Republican colleagues want to have a legal argument today, here it is: 

The American children of undocumented immigrants—and the American children of those here on visas such as those for work or study—are indeed persons born here in America. At the moment of their birth, they’re subject to the laws of the United States, with an undeniable claim to the rights, duties, and protections that reciprocal relationship entails.

In other words, citizenship. Case closed.

 

The Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born…in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” clearly applies to these individuals.  

The plain text of that clause is as straightforward a statement in American law as we ever get. 

But, there’s also additional support throughout the legislative history of this clause. 

In the debates on the passage of this amendment over a century ago, Congress clearly defined the intent and purpose of the birthright citizenship clause.

And rejected the types of arguments being advanced against it today.  

Similarly, the Supreme Court considered – and rejected – arguments against the plain meaning of the amendment in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, way back in 1898. 

Subsequent cases have rejected the proposition being advanced by our Republican colleagues today – that the children of certain immigrants born in the United States should be denied citizenship – because it’s unconstitutional. 

Clearly, the law and history support this straightforward conclusion. 

And that is why four federal judges have already blocked the President’s executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship. 

As one of those judges, John C. Coughenour – a Reagan-appointee – told Trump’s DOJ lawyers, the executive order was “blatantly unconstitutional.” 

In fact, he said in the courtroom that he had “difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order,” noting that it “boggle[d] [the] mind.”   

Flimsy arguments aside, ultimately, a president cannot unilaterally repeal a constitutional amendment.  

Any elementary student knows that the only way to repeal an amendment is with another amendment.  

Remember prohibition? 

The 18th Amendment to the Constitution outlawed the sale and manufacture of alcohol in 1919 – and it was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.

But there’s the rub.

Americans overwhelmingly support birthright citizenship. 

Presidents and extremists like Steven Miller, who have championed this idea, know they don’t have the votes to pass a constitutional amendment to repeal birthright citizenship, much less get the approval of three-quarters of the states to make it law.

So instead, they’re trying to do an end run on the Constitution with a tortured and unconstitutional reading of the English language and more than a century of legal analysis. 

Our Republican colleagues are here today trying to enable the president as he pushes his wager that the Supreme Court he stacked will ratify his illegal attempt to amend the Constitution without the American people’s consent. 

As a Congress, as a government, as a nation we should not be in the business of turning back the clock and allowing – or pushing – our country to backslide into the most shameful parts of its past. 

Instead, we should be passing the laws that guide it toward the light of a better future. 

One in which our most fundamental American principles - and the promise to form a more perfect union – ring true for all, rather than for a privileged few. 

And that more just, more fair America – and the policies that will actually get us there – is what I and my Democratic colleagues would rather use this committee to fight for. 

I yield back.