Dana El-Kurd

James Ho has not always attacked the concept of birthright citizenship, and in fact, he used to defend it.

Quote, birthright citizenship is a constitutional right, no less for the children of undocumented persons than for the descendants of passengers of the Mayflower, Ho said in a 2007 opinion piece for the Des Moines Register.

However, as the political wind shifted strongly against immigrants, particularly in the Trump era, Ho is also tilted in a dramatically different direction.

In a 2024 interview, Ho claimed that the United States was being invaded by the foreign-born and that denying citizenship to the children of the undocumented was necessary to defend national sovereignty.

The question of birthright citizenship might now be out of the hands of Ho and the rest of the Fifth Circuit.

On December 5th, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on the constitutionality of Donald Trump's executive order that would deny citizenship to those born in the United States if their parents were in the country temporarily or lacked legal status.

Dr. Yu thinks that the Supreme Court is likely to accommodate those restrictions, even as they reject James Ho's more extreme theories.

I think the Supreme Court would roll back some portion of the 14th Amendment protection over people who are born in this country.

But I don't think they are going to what Justice Ho is going after.

That is the invasion theory.

That doesn't mean that James Ho may not one day bring his extreme views on immigration to the nation's highest court.

The two most far-right judges on the United States Supreme Court are James Ho's mentor, Clarence Thomas, who turned 78 on June 23rd, and Samuel Alito, who celebrates his 76th birthday on April 1st.

Court watchers are speculating that Alito might step down as early as October.

His wife, Martha Ann, has expressed eager anticipation that the couple might soon be able to openly express their political views, as though the Alito's opinions have ever been a mystery.

It's still an uphill battle, but the odds of Democrats retaking the Senate after the off-year elections have improved significantly in recent weeks.

Alito may want to retire while a Republican-controlled Senate would still be able to rubber-stamp Trump's choice for a successor.

Alito also has a book coming out on October 6th, the day after the Supreme Court starts its fall term.

Continuing to serve on the court would interfere with any book promotion tour, and such an opening might lead to James Ho getting a promotion.

But Professor Yu said that the fifth court judge shouldn't pack his bags just yet.

Trump has largely outsourced the job of picking new federal judges or promoting them to the far-right Federalist Society, and Yu thinks that Ho might lack the polish that a powerful lobbying group would seek.