A major decision is shaping up at the Supreme Court on May 15. You may not have heard about it yet, but how this turns out—and what goes down on that day—has very high stakes for the future. If the Court rules in Trump’s favor, this will represent a further leap to all-out fascism. 

Yes, it is just that serious.

Birthright Citizenship and Trump’s Order

On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order abolishing “birthright citizenship” for people born in the U.S. whose parents were not “legal residents” at the time of their birth. This directly violates the U.S. Constitution, whose 14th Amendment explicitly guarantees citizenship to all people born in the United States.  As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian has pointed out:

This Amendment is not a “policy”—it is part of the Constitution itself. When this Amendment was passed, right after the Civil War, one of its most important purposes was to guarantee citizenship to former slaves; and by its very clear language, this Amendment guarantees citizenship to everyone born in the U.S.

If Trump wanted to legally and Constitutionally change this—which itself would be a very bad, reactionary move—he could try to do so by following the procedures for amending the Constitution as set forth in the Constitution itself. But that is just the point: Trump does not recognize any limits to his fascist dictatorship—not the Constitution, and not the laws or the rule of law and due process of law.¹ (from social media message @BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #115)

Here’s what the Amendment actually says: 

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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

There’s no “except” in there, singling out children of immigrants who do not have citizenship for denial of this right. These Amendments were passed in the direct aftermath of the Civil War, in which 700,000 people died in the titanic battle to end slavery in the U.S. The Congress that changed the Constitution did so with very, very conscious intention.

Trump Fascist Regime’s Deceptive Maneuver

Immediately after Trump issued this order, attorneys general in a number of states filed motions to enjoin (or prevent) the administration from putting this into practice, precisely on the grounds that it was a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to deprive whole groups of people of their rights. These injunctions, which came from federal district courts, have sway over the entire country.

This is a little complex, but important to understand. While the Supreme Court’s ruling on this particular case will not directly address the question of whether Trump’s executive order itself is legal, the Trump regime is asking the Court to allow it to become law in those districts in which injunctions were not instituted. In fact, that means most of the United States. In other words, the regime does not in this filing contest the order for the districts in which there was a ruling against them, but instead argues that the Supreme Court should no longer recognize the rights of these federal courts to issue rulings impacting the entire country. The regime argues instead that in the areas where there has not been a ruling, this bogus, anti-immigrant and utterly unconstitutional order should go immediately into effect while the full case works its way through the courts for final decision.

Should the Court decide for Trump, that could very possibly—depending on the exact wording of the decision—mean that most states would withdraw citizenship from those born after February 19 of this year. Such a decision could also imply that Trump could issue an executive order against any and every right now guaranteed by the Constitution and so long as a district didn’t contest it, it would be law in that district. This would set an extremely dangerous precedent. Think of it—what if a similar executive order were applied to the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and everybody except for those people living in Northern California, New York, and Detroit were suddenly denied the protection of the First Amendment? 

An Ugly History

This strategy—using what could appear to be a “mere procedural” motion to set the stage for an all-out stripping of what had been federally decided Constitutional rights—has been used before only three years ago, with the right to abortion. The blog Law Dork made this point:

Recall that—the fall before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—[the Supreme Court] allowed Texas’s S.B. 8 vigilante enforcement abortion ban to take effect despite it being clearly unconstitutional under Roe. There, the unsigned opinion for the court used procedure to justify its action, referring to the “complex and novel antecedent procedural questions” regarding the law designed to create those very questions and subvert the right to an abortion.

Unfortunately at that point, all too many groups that called themselves “pro-choice” refused to raise the alarm and call people into the streets. Women live with the bitter result of that inaction every day. After all, they said, this isn’t Roe itself. But this passivity sent a clear message that when Roe itself came up for reversal, as it did a few months later, these forces would not put up a fight.²

Now what Trump is trying to snake through would set an even worse precedent than S.B. 8—overturning not just a major Supreme Court ruling, but a right baked into the Constitution! Trump is trying to get the Court to allow him the ability to arbitrarily strip people of citizenship itself, as guaranteed and plainly spelled out in the Constitution! This is an attack both on the rule of law itself and on immigrants. Bob Avakian laid out the implications in the same social media message quoted above:

After illegally rounding up legal immigrants who have been convicted of no crime, denying them due process and sending them to a torture-chamber prison in El Salvador, Trump has openly threatened to do the same with citizens of this country. If this Trump regime is allowed to remain in power, no one will be safe from its fascist rule: Whoever Trump decides is an “enemy” will be targeted, with no protection from the law; Black people and other people of color, immigrants, women, LGBT people and others Trump regards as “inferior” and “unworthy” will be subjected to discrimination, oppression, persecution, brutality, and murder, without even the pretense of equality under the law, or equality and rights in any sense.

For these reasons, people need to support the call by Refuse Fascism to demonstrate at the Supreme Court itself on the date of the hearing, May 15 at 9 am—and to the extent possible, people across the country should reach out to others and figure out actions for this day, hammering at the slogan that “The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go NOW!,” drawing out the very high stakes and recruiting people into the cause, and underlining the need for a significant outpouring of protest on May 17 as well.

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY, WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA! THE TRUMP FASCIST REGIME MUST GO NOW!