New York: Donald Trump’s executive order outlawing birthright citizenship is hanging by a thread.
The US Supreme Court appeared unconvinced by Trump’s attempt to end automatic birthright citizenship during a lengthy hearing, which was briefly attended by the US President, on Wednesday.
The bench repeatedly questioned whether Trump’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment could justify excluding children born in the US based on their parents’ immigration status.
The tone and tenor of the exchanges reflected deep doubts about changing a long-recognised citizenship rule, CNN reported.
If the Supreme Court does rule Trump administration’s executive order illegal, one Smita Ghosh could have played a big role.
An Indian-American lawyer, Smita is one of the prominent legal voices who has been opposing Trump’s executive order, signed in January 2025, soon after he took oath for his second te
rm in the White House.
Smita, a Senior Appellate Counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Centre (CAC), has kept a low profile but emerged as an increasingly important figure in American constitutional law circles.
Smita holds a Juris Doctor (JD) and a PhD in American Legal History from the from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Before joining CAC, Smita was as a research fellow at Georgetown University Law Centre, where she taught immigration and separation-of-powers law.
Lead author of the ‘Brief of Scholars of Constitutional Law and Immigration’, filed in support of the challengers in Trump vs Barbara case, Smita has also worked as a Supreme Court Fellow at the US Sentencing Commission and clerked for a federal judge.
Smita and her co-authors emphasised on the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment – “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.”
She is one of the attorneys who has challenged Trump’s order, arguing that the move undermines long-standing constitutional protections for those born on American soil.
She has stressed on the fact that the 14th Amendment was meant to affirm existing legal principles rather than narrow them, directly countering the interpretation professed by Trump’s order.