Supreme Court

No, Congress Can't Just Overrule the Supreme Court on Birthright Citizenship

Plus: An unconstitutional war is back on.

Damon Root | 7.16.2026 7:00 AM

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(Illustration: Adani Samat. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom)

President Donald Trump failed in his efforts to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court into upholding his executive order on birthright citizenship, which would have stripped that constitutional guarantee from millions of babies born on U.S. soil.

Now a Republican lawmaker is hoping to effectively overrule that Supreme Court decision with a proposed bill that would resurrect Trump's unlawful order and place it in the federal statute books. As The Hill reports, "Indiana Republican Sen. Jim Banks on Monday introduced a bill that would codify President Trump's Day 1 executive order reshaping the definition of birthright citizenship in the U.S."

There's just one problem with Banks' scheme: Trump lost the birthright citizenship case Trump v. Barbara on constitutional grounds, which means that any federal law repeating Trump's already rejected position would be equally unconstitutional under the very Supreme Court precedent........

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