Trump to demand SCOTUS rehear birthright citizenship case

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he would demand that the U.S. Supreme Court rehear arguments about whether birthright citizenship was constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court late last month ruled that an executive order Trump signed on the first day of his second term in office was unconstitutional. Trump argued on Wednesday that the court’s decision would destroy the United States, and he said its ruling needed to be overturned. The court’s rules require that the parties file any petition for rehearing within 25 days of the initial decision.

Has the court ever reheard a case and reversed itself? Only rarely in its history has the Supreme Court agreed to rehear a case and then changed its mind. Back in 1956, the court agreed to rehear arguments in Reid v. Covert about whether two women who killed their husbands on military installations overseas received proper trials from the military tribunals that convicted them of murder. And the year before, in Indian Towing Co. v. United States, the court also overturned a decision about whether the U.S. government could be held liable for failing to maintain lighthouses.

Historically, when the court agrees to rehear arguments in a case, it usually solidifies its stance on the issue. It did so in Brown v. Board of Education in the 1950s and Roe v. Wade in the 1970s. The court also rarely changes its mind even when considering decisions made decades ago. The Pew Research Center found earlier this year that between its founding in 1789 and 2024, the court heard more than 29,000 cases and overturned previous rulings in fewer than 1% of those cases.

Dig deeper: Read Elizabeth Black’s report in The Sift about the court’s ruling against the Trump administration last month.

—Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include another example of the Supreme Court changing its mind after agreeing to rehear a case.