🚨 Supreme Court Just Gutted Our Constitutional Protections
How Trump's latest victory will make it nearly impossible to stop unconstitutional policies nationwide
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
The Supreme Court just made a decision that makes it much harder for judges to protect people from unfair government rules ⚖️. Before this, if the president made a rule that hurt people, one judge could stop that rule everywhere in the country 🌐. Now, that same judge can only protect the specific people who asked for help, leaving everyone else vulnerable 🛡️.
This is especially scary for families whose children were born in America but whose parents came from other countries—the government is trying to say these kids aren't really Americans, even though the Constitution says they are 🇺🇸.
It's like if your school principal made a rule that was clearly against school policy, but only one classroom could get protection from it while all the other classrooms had to follow the unfair rule 📚. People are fighting back by working together and using other legal tools, but it's going to be much harder to protect everyone now 🤝⚖️.
🗝️ Takeaways
🎯 The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling severely limits federal judges' ability to issue nationwide injunctions, allowing Trump's birthright citizenship restrictions to be enforced in most of the country
⚡ This creates a dangerous patchwork where constitutional rights depend on geography—a baby born in one state could be a citizen, while the same baby born elsewhere would not be
📜 Trump's lawyers are cynically using 19th-century cases that excluded Indigenous peoples from citizenship to argue against birthright citizenship for children of immigrants today
🌊 The ruling opens the door for Trump to implement his entire anti-immigrant agenda, from ending sanctuary city funding to suspending refugee resettlement
🛡️ Civil rights groups are pivoting to class-action lawsuits as the remaining legal strategy to protect vulnerable communities
💪 Indigenous and immigrant rights advocates are building unprecedented coalitions to resist these attacks on constitutional principles
The Supreme Court Just Handed Trump the Keys to Our Constitutional Rights: What the Latest Ruling Means for All of Us
Sábado por la mañana in the borderlands, and here I am again, sipping café negro while reading about how six justices in robes just decided that protecting our most fundamental rights is too much of a burden for federal judges.
According to NPR, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines that significantly limits the power of federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions—those crucial legal tools that have been stopping Trump's assault on birthright citizenship.
¿En serio? Really? In 2025, we're still fighting over whether babies born on American soil are actually American citizens?
What Just Happened: The Ruling That Changes Everything
On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority delivered what Trump called "a monumental victory for the Constitution"—though for those of us living in the reality of his policies, it feels more like a devastating blow to constitutional protection.
The Court held that federal judges can no longer routinely issue nationwide injunctions that block government policies nationwide.
As Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority, "When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too." But here's the verdadera truth: this wasn't about judicial restraint—it was about clearing the path for Trump's anti-immigrant agenda.
What this means in practice is terrifying.
Now, when a federal judge rules that Trump's birthright citizenship order is unconstitutional, that protection will only apply to the specific plaintiffs in that case, not to all the families who desperately need it.
As CNN reports, this creates a patchwork where "an infant would be a United States citizen and full member of society if born in New Jersey, but a deportable noncitizen if born in Tennessee."
The Historical Context We Can't Ignore
To understand why this matters so much, we need to talk about the 14th Amendment—that beautiful, revolutionary piece of text that declares "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
This amendment wasn't just legal language; it was a promise. A promise that America would never again deny citizenship based on race, as it had done in the horrific Dred Scott decision.
But here's where it gets complicated, hermanos.
The 14th Amendment, while groundbreaking for formerly enslaved people, initially excluded Indigenous peoples. The Supreme Court's 1884 Elk v. Wilkins decision held that Native Americans "born into a tribe" were not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" and therefore not entitled to birthright citizenship.
As legal scholar Bethany Berger explains, this exclusion wasn't about the amendment's text being unclear—it was because "American officials, imperfectly and with great reluctance, could see the reality of the Indian nations that stood before them." In other words, they recognized that Indigenous nations were sovereign, even as they systematically worked to destroy that sovereignty.
It wasn't until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 that Indigenous people were granted U.S. citizenship—and even then, many states refused to let Native Americans vote until 1948.
Trump's Dangerous Game: Using Our History Against Us
Now Trump's lawyers are cynically wielding this history like a weapon.
The Justice Department cited Elk v. Wilkins to argue that if Native Americans could be excluded from birthright citizenship, then so can the children of undocumented immigrants.
It's a nauseating legal strategy that pits marginalized communities against each other while ignoring the fundamental difference: Indigenous peoples were excluded because of their sovereignty, not their immigration status.
As Trump's Justice Department argued, "The United States' connection with the children of illegal aliens and temporary visitors is weaker than its connection with members of Indian tribes. If the latter link is insufficient for birthright citizenship, the former certainly is."
This argument is not just historically dishonest—it's morally bankrupt. Indigenous peoples are "the only people who are not migrants to the United States," as Stanford Law Professor Gregory Ablavsky points out.
Using our ancestors' struggles to deny citizenship to today's children born on American soil is a new low, even for this administration.
What This Means for Our Communities
The immediate impact is already being felt in our borderlands communities. According to the Native American Rights Fund, ICE agents are targeting Native Americans, particularly in the Southwest, forcing tribal governments to advise their citizens to carry tribal identification cards.
Think about that for a moment. In 2025, Indigenous people—whose ancestors have been on this continent for thousands of years—are being told to carry papers to prove they belong here.
¿Qué pinche ironía, no?
For families like mine, who carry both Indigenous and Mexican heritage, this ruling creates a terrifying reality. Our children's citizenship now depends on which federal court district they're born in and whether local judges can protect them from Trump's policies.
As The Indigenous Foundation notes, "Questioning the validity of Native American birthright would mean having to question the birthright of us all."
The Legal Maze Ahead
Here's what happens next, and it's not a pretty sight.
According to Politico, opponents of Trump's policies will now need to file multiple lawsuits in different jurisdictions or seek class-action certification to achieve broader protection. This creates exactly what the states feared: chaos until each case is resolved, possibly with multiple trips to the Supreme Court.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reading her dissent from the bench, called the ruling "a travesty for the rule of law" and "an open invitation to bypass the Constitution." She urged potential plaintiffs to immediately file class-action lawsuits—the one avenue the Court left open.
But let's be real about what this means for working families in our communities. Most individuals lack the resources to file federal lawsuits or navigate the complex process of class-action certification. They're too busy working multiple jobs, caring for their families, and trying to make ends meet in an economy that already marginalizes them.
The Broader Assault on Our Rights
This ruling isn't happening in a vacuum. As Trump bragged at the White House, "Thanks to this decision, we can now probably file to proceed with these numerous policies... including birthright citizenship, ending sanctuary city funding, suspending refugee resettlement, freezing unnecessary funding, stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries and numerous other priorities."
Órale. There it is.
This isn't just about birthright citizenship—it's about dismantling every protection that stands between vulnerable communities and this administration's cruelty. According to the government's own count, judges have issued 40 nationwide injunctions since Trump began his second term in January. Now, most of those protections are gone.
Environmental Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty at Risk
But here's what really keeps me up at night, compadres. As The Nation reports, if Trump successfully challenges Indigenous sovereignty—which this legal strategy opens the door to—it would make available "millions of acres of Indigenous lands held in trust by the federal government."
Then Trump would be free to "drill, baby, drill" on those lands.
Think about that connection.
The same legal arguments being used to deny citizenship to immigrant children could be weaponized to strip Indigenous nations of their sovereign status, opening our sacred lands to extraction industries. It's environmental racism and citizenship denial rolled into one devastating package.
The climate crisis is already hitting our borderlands communities harder than anywhere else. We're seeing extreme heat, drought, and flooding that disproportionately affect Indigenous and Latino families. Now, this ruling could accelerate the destruction by removing the legal tools we need to stop it.
The Resistance Continues: What We Can Do
But here's what I want you to remember, mi gente: we've been here before, and we've survived worse. Our ancestors survived colonization, slavery, exclusion laws, and countless attempts to erase us from this continent. We're still here, still fighting, still building the future our children deserve.
As the Center for American Progress notes, nationwide injunctions "ensure that Americans' rights do not fundamentally differ based on where they live." We can't let the Supreme Court's decision be the end of that principle.
Here's what we need to do:
Legal Resistance: Support organizations filing class-action lawsuits in every jurisdiction. The ACLU and other civil rights groups are already working on this, but they need our financial support and political backing.
Know Your Rights: The Native American Rights Fund has developed crucial resources about immigration enforcement and Native rights. Share these with your communities, especially in border areas where ICE is most active.
Electoral Action: While the courts have failed us, we still have power at the ballot box. Support candidates who will protect birthright citizenship and Indigenous sovereignty at every level—from school boards to Congress.
Community Defense: Build networks in your neighborhoods to know when ICE raids are happening and how to respond. Create rapid response systems to get legal help to families who need it.
Economic Power: Support businesses and organizations that actively oppose these policies. Divest from companies that profit from detention and deportation.
Cultural Preservation: Document and share our stories. The government wants to erase our histories and connections to this land. Don't let them.
A Note of Hope
Escúchame bien—this fight is far from over.
Yes, the Supreme Court handed Trump a victory, but they also left us openings. Class-action lawsuits, state-level protections, and the raw power of organized communities can still make a difference.
Every time they try to divide us—Indigenous against immigrant, citizen against non-citizen—we respond by building bridges. Every time they try to erase our histories, we tell our stories louder. Every time they try to destroy our futures, we plant seeds for the next generation.
The 14th Amendment still says what it says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." No executive order, no Supreme Court ruling, no racist policy can change the moral truth at the heart of that promise. We are all Americans. This is our land. And we're not going anywhere.
La lucha continúa, always and forever.
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The Extreme Court rules on the basis of ideology, not jurisprudence. Now that the 14th Amendment is toast, perhaps they'll go after the 13th. After all, it could not have been passed without the support of several Southern states, but those were now all "satellites," whose legislatures had effectively been taken over by Reconstruction forces. Had the vote come up prior to the Civil War, there is no way that 27 of 36 states would have supported the Amendment!
Between dreadful decisions by ReThuglican judges in my own cases and a series of rulings since they became the majority in the Extreme Court, I have reached a point at which I believe NO ReThuglican should be allowed to serve on a bench: not even a small claims or traffic court! Today's votes are a powerful argument in favor of my conclusion...