Vance slams SCOTUS birthright citizenship ruling: ‘Major, major mistake’

 

Vice President JD Vance strongly criticized the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) following its decision to strike down the Trump administration’s executive order (EO) on birthright citizenship.

Speaking in a televised interview on Fox News, Vance labeled the ruling a “major, major mistake” and argued that the concept of automatic citizenship for children born to illegal aliens or foreign tourists represents an “absurdity to the 14th Amendment.”

Despite the legal blow to one of the administration’s signature immigration priorities, Vance maintained an optimistic outlook for the GOP’s long-term legal strategy, noting that aspects of the decision were closely divided and suggesting the policy remains vulnerable to future challenges.

“This was a very disappointing ruling from the Supreme Court. We respect it, but we also think that it was a major, major mistake,” he said. “One of the things that it might invite, Laura, is people to come here quite literally on a vacation, give birth, and then all of a sudden the child and their family have the full benefits of American citizenship,” Vance told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. “It’s just a preposterous ruling, and the absurdity of that outcome suggests why the Supreme Court should have went the other way.”

 

The high court’s ruling delivered a setback to President Donald Trump’s efforts to unilaterally dismantle the modernized principle that anyone born on U.S. soil should automatically become an American citizen.

While the overall decision to invalidate the EO fell along a 6–3 lines, Vance highlighted the narrower 5–4 split among the justices regarding the broader constitutional understanding of the Citizenship Clause.

According to Vance, this narrow margin suggests that the current interpretation of birthright citizenship is “hanging by a thread” and signals an opportunity for a legal campaign to eventually reverse the precedent, drawing parallels to the ultimate success in overturning landmark decisions like Roe v. Wade.

 

 JUST NOW: VP JD Vance is OPTIMISTIC about the final outcome SCOTUS' birthright citizenship, saying the fact it was 5-4 means it's "HANGING BY A THREAD"

"This was only a 5-4 decision! How many times did we hear people say this was going to go 8-1?"

"The fact that this case… pic.twitter.com/v12mWZl52x

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 30, 2026

The EO at the center of the case sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States unless at least one parent was a citizen or permanent resident. The GOP administration maintains that the move is a necessary measure to curb “birth tourism” and disincentivize illegal immigration.

Why The 14^th Amendment Was Written In The First Place

 

The Citizenship Clause was crafted in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War with a very specific, urgent purpose: to fundamentally overturn the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision of 1857 and secure the status of newly freed Black Americans.

Before the amendment’s ratification in 1868, the Dred Scott ruling stood as Supreme Court precedent, notoriously declaring that Black people — whether enslaved or free — were not and could never become citizens of the United States. Following the Civil War, Southern states began passing “Black Codes.” These laws were designed to strip freed slaves of their basic rights, forcing them back into a system of legal subservience and leaving them in a stateless limbo.

To permanently shatter those codes, the Reconstruction Congress drafted the 14th Amendment.

 

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Vance explicitly expressed disappointment in Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s 

 

positioning, stating that while nobody is perfect, her vote in the case was a serious error.

Additionally, other administrative officials, including Border Czar Tom Homan, responded to the ruling by calling on Congress to immediately step in with legislative remedies. Homan warned further that the Trump administration would intensify investigations into exploitation networks and double down on enforcement measures to “combat the broader drivers” of illegal migration following the judicial ruling.