DENVER — Tuesday the United States Supreme Court dropped decisions in highly anticipated cases on birthright citizenship and transgender athletes.
Though neither of the decisions came from Centennial State cases, Coloradans can expect to feel shock waves.
The Court upheld the existing understanding of birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara. The decision officially put an end to President Donald Trump's 2025 Executive Action that didn't extend birthright citizenship privileges to children born in the United States to non-citizen parents who aren't lawful residents or those born to parents on temporary visas.
However, that order was never enforced. Soon after the executive action was signed, 22 states, including Colorado, filed suit to block enforcement and challenge Trump's interpretation.
"The decision that came out today says that the 14th Amendment means what it says, that all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States," said Jonathon Booth, a law professor at Colorado State University Law School. "If it had come out the other way, it would have been an earthquake again. The court would have rewritten the plain text of the Constitution."
Karen Orona, communication manager for the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition, said she was relieved at the decision as a birthright citizen herself and as someone who works with the community daily.
"It would have created pretty much stateless children," Orona said. "A lot of immigrant parents who come here, they're leaving their home country, and in a lot of instances, they're not able to return. So there was a question to be had there: what would happen to these children who were born on US territory but were not considered US citizens?”
Later Tuesday, the Justice Department released a statement on social media saying it will continue to fight this ruling and “actors seeking to exploit loopholes to obtain automatic citizenship for their children pose a national security threat and will be brought to justice.”
The court also ruled that the states do have the power to ban transgender athletes from playing on certain sports teams.
The cases in the decision came form West Virginia and Idaho — two of the dozens of states with laws restricting if and how transgender people can participate in competitive sports.
University of Colorado Law Professor Scott Skinner-Thompson says this decision won't change laws in the other states.
"The court is very clear about this: while this opinion says that states are allowed to exclude trans females from athletic participation, the court does not answer whether states have to exclude them, and they make that very clear," Skinner-Thompson said.
While Colorado doesn't have laws on the books regarding transgender athletes and sports, a citizen-led measure on November's ballot asks Colorado voters in they'd like to define sports teams as either male, female or co-ed, requiring athletes to join a team based on their sex assigned at birth.
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