Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt is mounting a multi-front legislative campaign to undo what he calls the Supreme Court's "ridiculous interpretation" of the 14th Amendment on birthright citizenship, and he says Congress is the only body that can fix it.
Schmitt, a Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on The Constitution, laid out his strategy in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The former Missouri attorney general, elected to the Senate in 2022, has introduced a constitutional amendment, a standalone bill called the American Citizenship Act, and a letter demanding cabinet-level action, all within weeks of the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Trump v. Barbara that struck down President Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship.
The June 2026 ruling found the executive order unconstitutional. But Schmitt argues the Court itself got the underlying question wrong, and that the legislative path Justice Brett Kavanaugh outlined in a concurring opinion gives Congress a clear roadmap to act.
Schmitt's argument starts with history. He told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Court "misinterpreted the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act [of 1866] that followed after the Civil War, which were meant to make sure that the children of former slaves were indeed full-fledged citizens."
"That was the right thing to do."
But conferring automatic citizenship on children born to illegal immigrants or foreign nationals visiting the country briefly was never the intent, Schmitt said. He offered a pointed example of the absurdity he sees in the current framework:
"It certainly didn't mean, nor was it contemplated, that you could come here from China, give birth, leave a week later, and then have a child raised in the [Chinese Communist Party], come back on their 18th birthday, and run for office or contribute to political campaigns and be a citizen just like somebody who spent their whole life here."
That scenario, birth tourism used to manufacture citizenship with no meaningful connection to the country, is exactly what Schmitt's legislation targets. His proposed constitutional amendment, announced June 30, would restore the scope of birthright citizenship to only the children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
Two weeks later, on July 15, Schmitt introduced the American Citizenship Act, a statutory companion designed to accomplish the same goal through legislation rather than the lengthy amendment process. On his official Senate account on X, Schmitt wrote: "SCOTUS got birthright citizenship dangerously wrong. I'm filing the American Citizenship Act to start the process of restoring the 14th Amendment's original meaning."
Schmitt pointed to Justice Kavanaugh's concurring opinion in Trump v. Barbara as the key. Kavanaugh argued that Trump's executive order violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, the existing statute, but did not violate the 14th Amendment itself. That distinction matters. It means Congress can change the statute without needing to amend the Constitution.
Schmitt described the fix in plain terms:
"A statutory fix that Justice Kavanaugh kind of laid out, which is to make clear that the language should be not subject to a foreign power, it's just kind of a technical issue, but it's what the authors of the 14th Amendment meant. I think the Supreme Court got it wrong so we're working on that."
Schmitt is not the only senator pursuing this approach. Sen. Jim Banks has introduced his own bill built on the same Kavanaugh framework, and the broader Republican push reflects a party unified on the view that the Court's majority opinion left a gap Congress must close.
One area where the Supreme Court's ruling actually aligned with conservative concerns involved the children of foreign diplomats. The Barbara decision clarified that children born in the United States to foreign diplomats are not automatically citizens, because diplomats are, by definition, subject to a foreign power.
Schmitt wants the executive branch to act on that finding immediately. On July 16, he sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin urging them "to take immediate action to investigate the extent of illegal grants of citizenship documentation to foreign diplomats' children."
Schmitt said the issue should be straightforward:
"This is pretty obvious to folks because they are subject to foreign power. So, we believe that there's lots of children of current diplomats or previous diplomats that have been conferred citizenship. We want the secretary of state to take a look at that to address that issue now that the Supreme Court spoke clearly on that as well."
Neither Rubio nor Mullin has publicly responded to the letter. How many diplomat children may have received citizenship documentation improperly remains unclear, Schmitt's office has not provided a specific estimate.
Schmitt's immigration agenda extends well beyond birthright citizenship. He fought for a $350 million provision in the reconciliation bill President Trump signed in June 2026, funding ICE agents to arrest illegal immigrants with criminal records as they are released from state and local prisons. Schmitt has framed the provision as a direct response to sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
His frustration with those jurisdictions was blunt:
"Right now, sanctuary jurisdictions across this country don't tell ICE or federal law enforcement when a child rapist who's here illegally is being released from prison. It's totally insane. And so, I think that's a big deliverable for the American people who want American sovereignty. They want to enforce our immigration laws."
Schmitt said Democrats blocked earlier efforts but that the reconciliation bill broke through. "The Democrats have stood in the way. But that was a big win that we got. And I think you're going to start seeing more and more deportations because of that," he said.
He introduced the Protect America Act in February 2026 to go further. That bill seeks to permanently end sanctuary city policies and "catch-and-release" practices, impose penalties on anyone who interferes with immigration enforcement operations, and revoke the tax-exempt status of any non-governmental organization that "promotes, incites, or provides material support for criminal violence." The bill's current status in the Senate remains unclear.
Meanwhile, the administration has pushed for a Supreme Court rehearing on the birthright citizenship question, signaling the White House views the legislative and judicial tracks as complementary rather than competing.
In the same interview, Schmitt pivoted to a subject that might seem far afield from immigration enforcement, college athletics. But the Missouri senator, a former two-sport athlete at Truman State University in northern Missouri who played both college baseball and football, argued the issue carries real stakes for roughly 500,000 student athletes nationwide.
Schmitt is cosponsoring the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan Senate bill that establishes requirements for name, image, and likeness agreements, known as NIL deals, and provides a limited exemption from federal antitrust law so schools and conferences can pool and sell media rights. He said the bill "is aimed at protecting a really uniquely American thing."
He admitted his own skepticism about congressional involvement in college sports has shifted dramatically:
"I love it. I got to play. I watch it. I'm a fan and I'm in a position now to work with colleagues to try to address some of the challenges that that are facing college athletics. If you would have asked me a few years ago if Congress, like our government, should be involved in this, I would have been very, very skeptical."
What changed his mind was the collapse of the NCAA's ability to govern itself. A decade of litigation has stripped the organization of its enforcement power, Schmitt said, creating a system where athletes can claim seven years of eligibility and transfer schools every six months with no consequences. Congress, he argued, "is the only entity on the planet that can provide the antitrust protection to the NCAA or some other body to make the rules and enforce them."
The deeper concern is financial. College football has long subsidized every other varsity sport at most universities, women's sports, Olympic sports, even men's programs like baseball that generate little revenue on their own. If football programs spend all their money on player compensation under the new NIL landscape and cannot maintain profitability, Schmitt warned, schools will start cutting those non-revenue programs entirely.
"They're going to start dropping those sports. They'll be club sports. You'll have hundreds of thousands of fewer scholarships out there for student athletes."
At a July 17 meeting of the Associated Press Sports Editors, Schmitt said he and his fellow co-sponsors "probably" have the 60 votes needed to clear a Senate filibuster, the threshold required to advance legislation without procedural obstruction. Other senators have also found bipartisan openings on issues where longstanding precedent no longer holds, suggesting appetite on both sides of the aisle for legislative fixes the courts cannot or will not provide.
Schmitt also had a lighter moment to point to: he was named MVP of the 2026 Congressional Baseball Game on June 11, helping lead the Republican team to an 11-2 rout of the Democrats.
Taken together, Schmitt's agenda amounts to a bet that Congress, not the courts, holds the answers on birthright citizenship, immigration enforcement, and college athletics. He has introduced or cosponsored at least four major pieces of legislation since February, fired off a letter demanding executive branch action, and publicly challenged the Supreme Court's reasoning within days of the ruling.
Whether any of it passes is another question. The constitutional amendment faces the highest bar in American law, two-thirds of both chambers and ratification by three-fourths of the states. The American Citizenship Act needs 60 Senate votes. The Protect America Act's status is uncertain. And the Protect College Sports Act, while bipartisan, still has to survive the floor.
But Schmitt's posture reflects a broader conservative instinct after the Barbara ruling: stop waiting for judges to get it right and start writing the law yourself. When the Supreme Court hands down a decision conservatives consider wrong, the answer is not resignation. It is legislation.
