When it comes to the worst Supreme Court decision in history, there is plenty of competition. Last Friday (June 27, 2025) Trump v. CASA joined the race.  In 2004, President George W. Bush nominated Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) for the designation. Controversy over that case led to the 14th Amendment and the establishment of birthright citizenship, but only after we fought a Civil War.

Trump v. CASA not only joined the competition, but also revived the idea that when it comes to citizenship, where you were born in the United States and not whether you were born in the United States is what counts. With its 6-3 ruling, the Court has set up a scenario where a citizen of any one state may not be a citizen of the United States. 

Dred Scott was born a slave in Virginia and had moved with his owner to the free state of Illinois and Wisconsin Territory (now Minnesota) before settling in the slave state of Missouri. In Illinois, as in Massachusetts, a slave entering the state was immediately considered free. Scott sued for his freedom in Missouri. When Scott’s owner, Irene Emerson, nee Sanford, moved to Massachusetts, a free state, the litigation became a federal case. And in March 1857, the Supreme Court, with Roger Taney as chief justice, ruled that Scott had no standing to sue because men of African descent could never be citizens of the United States. 

Massachusetts was shaken to its core. Since 1780, Black men had been able to vote, hold office, and enter freely into contracts. They were considered citizens. Shortly after the Scott decision, the Legislature introduced “An Act Concerning Citizenship and Personal Freedom” to address the “denaturalization” of Massachusetts citizens. It stated that “Every person born within the limits of this Commonwealth [and persons born outside the Commonwealth] and children of parents who are citizens” are citizens. 

The Massachusett Senate Committee on Federal Relations report accused the Supreme Court of being a “corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundation [of the national Constitution].” In May 1857, in defiance of the Dred Scott ruling, the Secretary of the Commonwealth, in a process that was in effect through the Civil War, was authorized to issue passports and certificates of citizenship to “colored men.” This did not go over well with the slave states during the unsuccessful Peace Conference of 1861.

The Taney Court and the Scott decision were considered highly political, with seven of the nine justices appointees of slaveholding presidents; five justices were slaveholders. The Court had kept the pro-slavery president-elect, James Buchanan, in the loop before the 7-2 decision to deny citizenship to men of color, with Benjamin Curtis of Massachusetts and John McLean of Ohio dissenting.

The Roberts Court and the Trump v. CASA decision are also being viewed as highly political, with six of the nine justices appointees of conservative presidents, three of them by Trump, who has been trumpeting his Supreme Court.

In 1857, a young lawyer named Horace Gray was an advisor on Constitutional matters at the Massachusetts State House and his analysis of the Dred Scott decision informed the Massachusetts law. Some 41 years later, Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray wrote the majority opinion in US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the landmark finding that a Chinese man born in the United States to alien parents was a citizen by birth with the overall effect that all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States and the state they reside in.

The Wong Kim Ark decision is the one targeted by Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship and the one under attack because of the Trump v. CASA decision.

Palma McLaughlin, a Dorchester resident, is a director of the League of Women Voters of Boston