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Supreme Court Rules on Trans Athletes Case; Supreme Court Reaffirms Birthright Citizenship. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired June 30, 2026 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: And I'm Pamela Brown live outside the Supreme Court, and you're in THE SITUATION ROOM.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: And we're following major breaking news, the United States Supreme Court handing down two major decisions in the final day of its blockbuster term, the most anticipated ruling on what's called birthright citizenship.

The justices blocked the president's attempt to end it. And that means babies born on U.S. soil here in the United States will continue to be American citizens automatically, regardless of their parents' citizenship status.

BROWN: Also today, a landmark decision on transgender rights, the court upholding state bans and restrictions on transgender students playing on girls' sports teams. Today's opinion will likely shape policy on school athletics across the country. More than two dozen states in America have restrictions or bans on transgender athletes.

I want to bring in our CNN chief legal affairs correspondent, Paula Reid, who has been outside here of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court is now done with its session for the year. And the last one that came down, as we expected, was on birthright citizenship. Tell us more about that decision.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: So, here, President Trump, really one of the first things he did in office in his second term was assigned an executive order limiting birthright citizenship, so something that has been in the Constitution for over a century, that, if you are born here, that you are a citizen, regardless of who your parents are. Now, similar language to what is in the 14th Amendment in the

Constitution was also put into laws by Congress about 60, 75 years ago. So they had a real uphill battle to convince these justices that they should override and overturn not only what's in the Constitution and the 14th Amendment, but also what Congress has said twice.

And, here, Chief John Roberts, actually joined by several of his liberal colleagues -- it's a really interesting mix of justices -- said that you cannot do that. Now, what's interesting is, Justice Kavanaugh did point out that the way to amend the Constitution or change the laws, you could take the same language in that executive order, hand it to Congress if you get them to pass a law that says that, you could be successful in ending birthright citizenship.

Now, this is a big loss for the president. This is something that he promised to do. In his first term, he talked about it. He actually did it, one of his first things, again -- like I said, that he had a huge priority on this, but he was unable to convince the conservative supermajority that he should be allowed to do this.

We will see what they do next. They could still get more aggressive in terms of their enforcement of various laws, but, at this point, birthright citizenship still the law the land.

BROWN: Still the law.

But you still had dissents, right?

REID: Yes.

BROWN: Conservative Justice Thomas dissenting, saying -- quote -- "The citizenship clause added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship. Today's opinion devalues that citizenship. I respectfully dissent."

And, as you noted, Justice Kavanaugh sort of left the door open for Congress to act. So we will see what happens on that front. And we're awaiting reaction also from the White House on this decision from the High Court ruling against what try President Trump wanted here.

So, Paula Reid, thanks. Stand by. We have more to discuss.

I want to go now to Joan Biskupic to get your take on this. This was a really stunning day of important, far-reaching decisions, wasn't it, Joan?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: That's right, Pamela.

And you know how I'm often standing outside the court saying what I just saw was so dramatic? This was a moment when Chief John Roberts from his center chair on that elevated bench really tried to have no drama.

He spoke for seven minutes in the most matter-of-fact tone, looking up to spectators here and then over his reading glasses, just saying, this executive order flies in the face of centuries of English common law, centuries of American history, and that there's no grounding at all.

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He really went to what, first of all, America was all about, picking up pages from the British when the country split off, and how when a baby was born on British soil, there was an allegiance owed to the king, and there was a certain allegiance owed back to that child.

And that had been the common law way. And he said, when we came across the ocean, that was picked up here, and that had actually been the understanding here, that once anyone is born on U.S. soil, person's automatically a citizen.

He noted, though, that Dred Scott, the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857 that said that blacks were not could not be citizens, that that disrupted it at the time, that notion.

But the 14th Amendment came back about a decade later and said that, again the language of the 14th Amendment, which I'm sure you all have repeated many times today, the fact that anyone born in America in the U.S. is automatically a citizen, automatically has birthright citizenship, that essentially restored what had been the common law way, and that there's been no going back.

So he refers to the 14th Amendment from 1868, and then he noted that, in 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court had reaffirmed that understanding that anyone born in the U.S. is -- has an allegiance to the country, has a reciprocal relationship with the country, no matter what the status of the immigrant parents.

And, in fact, that decision from 1898 involved Chinese nationals. And, in that case, the Supreme Court said it doesn't matter. The children are still American citizens. And, today, the chief reiterated that. At one point, I think, again, to really emphasize that there should not be any controversy here, he said, we broke -- we break no new ground today.

He said it about as emphatically as he had said anything. So this was -- this was a moment where the chief was trying to say what Donald Trump is doing here flies in the face of centuries of history.

And then one should -- thing I should mention, Pamela, normally, I tell you about all the dissents from the bench when justices who are on the downside want to take this extraordinary step of reading an oral dissent. There was none of that today, and in part because two of the three justices who dissented, there was Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, two of them were not even on the bench.

Sam Alito and Neil Gorsuch did not even attend this morning's session. And Justice Thomas did not read anything from the bench, but I know you have had access to his opinion, which is quite impassioned and quite goes to the history of the 14th Amendment.

He was only the second black American ever appointed to the Supreme Court. He's now the only black man on the Supreme Court, of course, Ketanji Brown Jackson a black woman on the Supreme Court. But Justice Thomas, in his written opinion, said the court adds to the sad history of the 14th Amendment by disregarding its history and what it was intended to do to freed slaves.

He talked about that history and said that's the history of the 14th Amendment, not to give birthright citizenship to anyone. And just to show you about how -- to indicate how the drama that was absent this morning in the courtroom played out over more than 100 pages here, John Roberts' opinion, trying to just dispatch with this case pretty efficiently, was only 26 pages.

Clarence Thomas' opinion was 91 pages, and then Sam Alito writes separately and Neil Gorsuch writes separately. So there was a lot there.

Do we have time for me to tell you what happened with the trans case, Pamela?

BROWN: Yes, we do, absolutely.

BISKUPIC: OK. OK, I will go on to that. I wasn't sure where we were in the lineup.

But I just want to tell you how the day started. This is -- of course, was the last day, which everyone has mentioned, but another closely awaited case involved trans athletes and whether transgender women who want to play on female sports teams would be allowed to do it.

And Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has always talked about his connection to his two daughters who play sports and who were in the courtroom with his wife watching as he read from the bench, talked a lot about the experience of young women playing sports, kind of buttressing his conclusion in the end to say that, under federal education law in Title IX and under the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection, that trans women can be lawfully excluded, as West Virginia and Idaho have done, lawfully excluded from female sports.

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And he said some 27 states have this. So before we got to birthright citizenship, we did have much more drama with the way Brett Kavanaugh presented this and, as I said, brought kind of a salute to young women's sports, talking about the trophies they claim, what they bring back to their bedrooms, talking about the team sport attitude.

Justice Sotomayor, then, she was one of the dissenters from that opinion. She said, while I can respect the experience that the justice is talking about for women who can play sports, think of the trans women who want to have that same experience. And she talked about the unfairness of the ruling here today, Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Joan Biskupic, thank you so much.

I want to go back to our Paula Reid with an update -- Paula.

REID: Well, Joan said there wasn't a lot of drama inside the court, but we have a little micro drama here outside the court.

Our wonderful colleagues at NPR, we have learned, have erroneously put a story out saying that Justice Alito has plans to retire, is going to retire. That would obviously be enormous news. Now, they have since retracted that story. We have done our own reporting. We have also learned that is not true, but that is causing a lot of confusion right now in and around the Supreme Court.

So, if any of our viewers have any questions, again, they have retracted that story. We have done our own reporting, and, at this point, we do not expect Justice Alito or any other justice as of now to retire.

BROWN: All right, thank you, Paula.

I'm going to bring in White House correspondent Alayna Treene.

We're already getting some reaction from the White House to what happened here at the High Court today, Alayna.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: We are.

We heard from the president on two different rulings. I will start with the ruling on trans women playing in women's sports, and, specifically, of course, noting the context here that they said that the bans in Idaho and West Virginia can stand. Other states will get to decide whether or not they want to issue similar bans.

The president, however, trying to claim that this is a win overall and that men, in his words, will not play in women's sports. I'm just going to read for you what he posted.

He said: "Big win. The United States Supreme Court just ruled against men playing in women's sports. Wow. That takes that ridiculous situation off the table." That is the first comment we heard from the president directly here.

Now, I will say, of course, this has become such an issue for the president. I know his team is eager to tout the specific decision as a huge win for him. This has really been a cultural push of this administration. They have also had a various series of events here trying to tout this, but again noting that context with the president is arguing there's not a federal ban on this.

This is something that the Supreme Court is saying that states will get to decide whether or not to uphold. We got another statement, though, from the president, Pamela, on this separate issue of removing the political caps, the spending on different caps for different organizations to coordinate with political campaigns.

The president also touting this as a win. He wrote -- quote -- "The Supreme Court just took restrictions off political spending, a big win for Republicans and, more importantly, the First Amendment."

The interesting thing, of course, about this case is, one, a lot of people believe that this is going to benefit, Pamela, Republicans in this November midterm election, just given the massive war chest that Republicans typically have in comparison, specifically with these outside organizations that they have compared to Democrats.

This was also something that was first proposed by then-Senate candidate J.D. Vance, obviously now the vice president of the United States. So they're eager to tout that as a win as well. We are still waiting to hear, though, of course, on the biggest decision of today, which was the Supreme Court saying that -- really rebuffing the president's move to try and limit birthright citizenship.

We have not yet heard from the president on that. I'm talking to my White House sources, and we will get you that comment as soon as we have it.

BROWN: All right, Alayna Treene, live for us from the White House, thank you so much -- Wolf, back to you.

BLITZER: All right, I want to bring in our senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, CNN's legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams, and Cully Stimson, the acting director for the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation here in Washington.

Elie, let me start off with you.

Birthright citizenship, this is a huge moment for millions of people here in the United States who were nervous.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Bottom line, millions of people who might have been nervous about whether their children are citizens can now breathe easy.

The law as we have had it on the books in the Constitution since 1868 for 158 years has now been re-re-re-affirmed. If you are born here, you are a citizen, regardless of your parents' status, with only the narrowest of exceptions for diplomats and...

BLITZER: And so, even if your parents were undocumented immigrants...

HONIG: Yes.

BLITZER: ... and the child was born in the United States, that child is going to be for the rest of his or her life a U.S. a citizen?

HONIG: Is a citizen. And that's exactly the point that Donald Trump was trying to make with his executive order, was to say, if the parents are illegal in the country, or even if they're here temporarily, the children are not citizenship.

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That view has been rejected. And I think, bigger picture, birthright says something fundamental about this country and who we are as a nation. As Priscilla said earlier, not every country has this. In fact, a minority of countries in the world have this. Canada does. Mexico does, but most European countries do not have this concept. It's something we have had on the books and believed in for 150 years.

There is a debate about whether it's good policy, smart or unwise policy. But that has nothing to do with the legality of this. As the chief justice says, we break no new ground here. This is in the Constitution. It's been enmeshed in statute and in a Supreme Court decision, so very important decision, impacts millions of people.

BLITZER: So the Supreme Court today basically lets stand what has been the practice of the United States for more than 150 years.

HONIG: Let stand and reaffirmed and put an end to the effort to narrow it, yes.

BLITZER: What do you think, Cully?

CULLY STIMSON, SENIOR LEGAL FELLOW, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION: I think this puts to bed the idea that this is anyone but the Roberts court. Roberts has been in the majority in the big cases. He was obviously going to write this decision.

Kavanaugh's concurrence is interesting, because he says, look, you didn't have to take on the constitutional issue. You could have narrowed your opinion and basically ruled on the statute. And he also says, if Congress wants to amend 8-USC-1401a, they can, which I think he's inviting Congress to do in a way.

And so I also thought the pithiness of the chief's opinion compared to Thomas' encyclopedia was interesting. And he -- and Thomas says -- quote -- "The court's account is not historically accurate."

And so I think people, if they really want to celebrate America 250, read the chief's opinion in Slaughter yesterday, read the chief's opinion here, and read the concurrences and dissent, because they're trying to put history into life in terms of these issues presented to the court.

BLITZER: Let me bring in Elliot.

Go ahead.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes.

No, I would just say -- I would go even further on Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence, which is fascinating, in that the constitutional question, in terms of what the 14th Amendment says, that's only 5-4 on this court. Justice Kavanaugh sort of carves himself out of that and draws this sort of alternative approach of saying that, yes, we don't even need to reach the constitutional question.

There's a statutory question, and quite frankly, Congress could have actually effectuated the same result here that the president tried to do with this executive order. That's the big shock of the day more than anything else, that the Supreme Court was this closely divided on what the 14th Amendment -- sort of the effect of the 14th Amendment is. And so, yes, it is a profound decision, both in terms of what it is

and means to be an American and also staving off the absolute legal chaos that would have broken out had they ruled the other way, having to identify the citizenship of adopted children, for instance. How do you do that? How do you abandon children or children who don't know -- they haven't met one or both of their parents, whatever else.

Everybody would have to verify their citizenship and create a sort of a generation of legal mess. And so they staved off a big problem, but the closeness on that constitutional question really struck out -- stood out to me.

BLITZER: So if undocumented immigrants, a mother who is undocumented in the United States has a child born in the United States, the fact that you have a child who's a U.S. citizen, does that help you become a permanent legal resident of the United States?

STIMSON: Well, first off, let me just make sure we're all clear on something. John Sauer, the S.G., said during oral argument in this case that, if this rule were to go into effect, it would be applied prospectively.

That's why Amy Coney Barrett, in the questioning of John Sauer and the other advocate, was asking, well, how do you do this in a practical matter? So we're not talking about going backwards and looking at people who were illegal aliens who had kids here and trying to figure out whether they're -- one of the parents was legal or not.

But as to your question, Wolf, yes, if, for example, you have a citizen marrying a noncitizen and they have a child in the country, that's a citizen. And this decides it not only on the constitutional ground, but on the statutory ground. So, anyone born in this country, period, is a citizen, with the exception of children of diplomats, and then the Indian tribes as a result of the statute.

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WILLIAMS: But just real quick on the -- but real quick, on that -- what Coney Barrett was getting at there, imagine a parent comes to the country unlawfully yesterday, has a child, a year from now has another child.

That is a legal mess to identify the different citizenship statuses of the different people in one particular household. And I think she was making the point that this -- there just -- even if the court were to try to have made it prospective, looking forward into the future, it would have been logistically, legally, administratively so complex and such a mess that would have created even far bigger problems for the Supreme Court.

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BLITZER: Priscilla, you cover immigration for us. Give us your assessment.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, to Elie's point, the debate was the point. That was what all of this was moving toward.

When the president signed his executive order on the first day in office, the idea was to kick off a legal battle. That is what my sources told me. It wasn't that they expected it to take effect that day or the next day. It is that they wanted it to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

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They just needed something to get that going. And that's what this executive order was, which wasn't just targeting undocumented parents, but also people legally in the United States who might be here temporarily. Think, as an example, someone here who is on business and here for a short period of time, but may have a child during that time.

So the -- this is going to be a blow to people within the president's orbit who have wanted the Supreme Court to decide this matter and the matter specifically of the subject to the jurisdiction of and what that means. I think we will have to see how they move forward from here.

But the reason we're all talking about this is because they wanted to talk about this. This conversation was always in the fringes about what birthright citizenship meant. It is now something we are talking about, because that was the point of this executive order is what the president wanted to do in the first administration.

He got there in the second administration by kicking this off with this executive order, and now the Supreme Court is reaffirming it. And, as we have seen with polling, Americans do generally support this concept. So I guess I will hand it over to you for the politics of that.

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BLITZER: Well, let me ask you, Mark. It's a huge setback, a huge loss for President Trump. How do you think he's going to react to this?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I mean, we know how he's going to react. He's going to get upset.

HONIG: Not well.

PRESTON: He's going to -- he will type out 60,000 words, that some of it will make sense, and he will say thank you for your attention to this matter, right? I mean, that's how he will close it.

I think sometimes we just have to take a step back. And, again, maybe because I have been in this business for way too long, but I look at two sides fighting over an issue, when the issue isn't as easy as black and white. There's a lot of gray area in between.

And what we have is, we have political professionals who are just dug in on either side that won't come to the table to try to find some reasoning, to try to not only find resolution on this, but to find resolution on transgender athletes, to find resolution on just about anything, because what the country has become now is this partisan divide where there's no middle ground.

And that's why we see it playing out here when we talk on these panels. We see it playing out when we go to baseball games with our friends. We see it playing out in youth sports.

We're actually at a point right now where we're a society that doesn't really act as a United States of America. We are divided into camps right now, and issues like this only further divides us, and unless we decide to stop and say, you know what, I'm going to give a little bit on my side, you're going to give a little bit on your side, we're going to try to come to the table.

WILLIAMS: I will -- just one thing to note, the fight between the conservatives on the court on this issue, and it's a striking line from Chief John Roberts with this idea of, does citizenship require allegiance or whatever he calls it, a dramatically revisionist view.

It's sort of a shot across the bow to even the other conservatives on the court. So even they amongst them are grappling with this issue and sort of where this is going to go. Your guess is as good as mine, Mark. I don't know.

BLITZER: All right, everybody stand by. We have a lot more to assess. This is a dramatic day here in Washington, D.C.

And we have an important programming note for all of our viewers. CNN All Access will host a special on today's Supreme Court action at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. CNN's Paula Reid and Laura Coates, they will break down the decisions, try to answer your questions. And you can submit your questions right now by e-mailing us at CNNAllAccess-questions@CNN.com. Once again, that's CNNAllAccess-questions@CNN.com.

Be sure to join Paula, Laura and their expert guests all on CNN All Access today 1:00 p.m. Eastern.

We will be right back.

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BLITZER: Want to get back to the major breaking news here, the U.S. Supreme Court shutting down President Trump's efforts to try to end what's called birthright citizenship for millions of people here in the United States.

And we are already getting reaction to the birthright citizenship opinion from Capitol Hill.

Let's go to CNN correspondent Arlette Saenz.

What are you hearing, Arlette?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was very disappointed in the Supreme Court's decision on birthright citizenship and said it would be up to Congress to act next.

But the reality here is that Congress trying to address this would be incredibly difficult, especially when you think about how divided these two chambers have been. But I want you to take a listen to the speaker talking about this matter when he was informed live during a press conference that the Supreme Court decision had ruled against Trump.

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REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): I need to read the opinion, OK? But, obviously, that's -- I mean, you could say that's a textualist, originalist view.

However, I do think that this has been grossly abused in recent years, OK? And that is the case that was being made by the plaintiffs in the case, and we're very sympathetic to that, because it is a serious problem. We have -- it's become a tourism -- birthing tourism, they call it, a trend, where people will just come.

And you just come onto the soil and have your child, and then they're able to avail themselves of the welfare state and everything else. It's been abused. It's one of those things that was intended to serve a noble, important purpose, and has been thwarted and overused and abused.

And so I'm sure that we will continue to look at that.

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