Chief Justice John Roberts’ ancestral line traces to a coal mining village in northwestern England. Justice Elena Kagan’s grandparents had been Russian Jewish immigrants. And Justice Samuel Alito’s father was born Salvatore Alati in Italy in 1914 shortly earlier than the household emigrated and his title was “Americanized.”
Other justices inherited household roots deeper on US soil, with their later generations going again to Ireland, France and Spain. The court docket’s two Black justices, Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson, have written of ancestors introduced to America from Africa in bondage.
Each of the 9 has a definite origin story. Some categorical common delight in their ethnicity, like Alito, Kagan, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose individuals lived in Puerto Rico lengthy earlier than it grew to become a US territory. For different justices, ethnic heritage is extra distant. Justice Neil Gorsuch is a fourth era Coloradan who defines himself in phrases of his household’s Western expertise.
They are all about to take up a historic dispute that goes to the core of American identity. From their private vantage factors and separate ideological approaches, they will determine if the idea of birthright citizenship, cemented in the Fourteenth Amendment, endures.
Adopted in 1868 after the Civil War, the modification states: “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.”
The case to be heard on April 1 arises from President Donald Trump’s January 20, 2025, executive order that might finish the assure that almost all kids born on US soil develop into automated residents regardless of their dad and mom’ immigration standing. Relying on the clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” the administration would exclude kids born to undocumented immigrants or individuals in the US on short-term visas.
The order grew out of Trump’s broader agenda to shut the border and was instantly challenged by immigrant advocates, civil rights teams and Democratic state attorneys common. Lower court docket judges repeatedly mentioned it violates the Fourteenth Amendment and excessive court docket precedent. (The justices took up an earlier chapter of the controversy, however solely to assess decrease court docket judges’ use of nationwide injunctions to block the Trump coverage.)
The justices will immediately confront whether or not the constitutional assure of birthright citizenship prevails. The query is, basically: When does one develop into an American?
It’s a question which will convey some of the justices again to their family origins and particular person identities.
Chief Justice John Glover Roberts Jr., who will open the public arguments on April 1 after which lead the justices’ later personal vote, descends from English and Slovakian immigrants who had been searching for a greater life in America. Some had been pushed out by famine and political strife.
His great-great-grandfather Richard Glover was a miner in the English village of Atherton. Glover and his spouse, an Irish lady named Mary Linskey, came to America in 1863. One of their daughters married George Roberts. The son of that couple (additionally named George and who could be grandfather to the chief justice) settled in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Their son, John Glover Roberts, was their tenth little one, born 20 years after their first.
Roberts’ maternal line, tracing to the area of Hungary with household names of Podraczky and Gmucza, came to America a era after his father’s English facet. They, too, made their manner to the coal and metal hub of Johnstown in the Allegheny Mountains east of Pittsburgh. That’s the place Rosemary Podrasky (as the title was then spelled) met John Glover Roberts.
Their son, the chief justice, bears his father’s title. Roberts and his three sisters grew up in northern Indiana.
The senior-most affiliate justice, Clarence Thomas grew to become solely the nation’s second Black justice when he was appointed in 1991. Thomas has noticed that a lot of his household tree has been misplaced to him, because it has for many African Americans whose ancestors’ lives right here started in slavery.
Thomas wrote in a 2007 memoir that he was descended from West African slaves who resided on the barrier islands and in the low nation of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. He recounted that his individuals in Georgia had been known as “Geechees,” whereas these in South Carolina had been referred to as “Gullahs.” Such descendants of West African slaves maintained, for generations after their freedom, the distinctive creole language and tradition.
Relatives of the justice’s father, M.C. Thomas, labored on a plantation simply south of Savannah, Georgia. The justice mentioned he believed the ancestors of his mom, Leola Williams, toiled on the similar plantation. When Thomas was younger and dwelling in Pin Point, Georgia, his father left the household, and his mom had bother caring for her kids. So Thomas and a brother had been raised by his maternal grandparents in Savannah. They formed the course of his life.
“My grandfather was raised by his grandmother, who had been born into slavery,” Thomas mentioned as he described his household’s challenges at a latest University of Notre Dame Law School appearance. “He treasured education deeply, yet he could not read the instructions on his hot water heater. Learning to read was not easy for me either. I kept a Funk & Wagnalls dictionary close at hand; I treasured words, treasured language.”
Thomas additionally entitled his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.”
Samuel Anthony Alito Jr.’s grandparents came from small cities in southern Italy. His father’s dad and mom arrived in the US in 1914, carrying their toddler son Salvatore, who had been born earlier that yr in Saline Joniche, Calabria. That boy would develop into the justice’s father. The justice’s mom, Rose Fradusco, was born in the US shortly after her personal Italian household arrived there.
“There was a lot of pressure at that time to adopt American ways, American habits, even to the point of changing people’s names,” Alito recounted in an interview with an Italian newspaper final December. “So my father’s real name was Salvatore Alati and when at Ellis Island or when children went to school, their Italian first names were all changed to Americanized names, so that’s how my father became Samuel Alito. I think they just didn’t hear what my grandmother had told them, and they didn’t care that much. So that’s how we became Alito.”
The household settled in Trenton, New Jersey, and Alito has typically spoken of his dad and mom’ early struggles. “My father was brought to this country as an infant. He lost his mother as a teenager. He grew up in poverty,” Alito mentioned as he launched himself at his 2006 Senate affirmation listening to.
“Although he graduated at the top of his high school class, he had no money for college, and he was set to work in a factory. But at the last minute, a kind person in the Trenton area arranged for him to receive a $50 scholarship … After he graduated from college, in 1935, in the midst of the Depression, he found that teaching jobs for Italian Americans were not easy to come by, and he had to find other work for a while.” Alito’s mom was additionally a trainer; he had one youthful sister.
Alito in February was awarded the Magna Grecia Foundation worldwide prize, given to outstanding people who’ve distinguished themselves in the promotion of Italy.
Sonia Maria Sotomayor’s ancestors hint to the 1800s in Puerto Rico, when Spain managed the island. That resulted in 1898 (after the Spanish-American War) and the island grew to become a US territory. Then in 1917, underneath the Jones Act, all individuals born in Puerto Rico grew to become US residents. (People on the island, nonetheless, nonetheless lack the full privileges of statehood and are unable to vote in presidential elections.)
“My family’s shifting fortunes followed the island’s economic currents: coffee plantations sold off piecemeal until yesterday’s landowners took to laboring in cane fields that belonged to someone else,” Sotomayor wrote in her 2013 memoir.
She added: “We moved from mountainside farms to small towns like San Germán, Lajas, Manatí, Arecibo, Barceloneta; and after a time, on to what were then the slums of Santurce in San Juan; from there the mainland beckoned…..”
Her dad and mom had been half of the first wave of Puerto Rican migration to New York in the Nineteen Forties. Her mom, Celina Baez, who’d been born close to the city of Lajas, left the island when she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps. She shipped out first to Georgia after which was assigned to the Army’s Port of Embarkation in New York. Her father, Juan Sotomayor, additionally migrated throughout World War II to the metropolis.
The couple ultimately settled with their daughter, and a youthful son, in the Bronx. Sotomayor has known as herself a “proud Nuyorican.”
In 2024, as half of a Library of America Latino poetry occasion, the justice described a verse that was sung at household events: “En Mi Viejo San Juan” (In my old San Juan) by Noel Estrada. “This poem is like the national anthem for all Puerto Ricans who live outside Puerto Rico,” she mentioned.
In an analogous method, Elena Kagan’s Jewish household identification is woven together with her American associations. Three of her 4 grandparents had been immigrants, arriving in the US in the early 1900s; the fourth (her father’s mom) was born right here of newly immigrant dad and mom. They had been all Russian Jews, tracing to lands now half of Ukraine.
Her mom, the former Gloria Gettelman, grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family. After studying English in class and ultimately going to Penn State for school and Columbia for a grasp’s in training, she taught for 1 / 4 century at Hunter College High School.
Her father, Robert Kagan, additionally went to Penn State, then earned a regulation diploma at Yale. The couple settled in Manhattan, the place the future justice was raised. Kagan, who has two brothers, was the first lady to take part in a “bat Torah” at the Orthodox synagogue close to her Upper West Side residence. “It was the great Jewish experience of my youth,” she has mentioned.
Kagan generally wields Yiddish phrases in her opinions and statements from the bench. In a 2023 securities dispute, when a lawyer advised the justices, “Well, it’s settled only to the extent no one’s brought it up and forced this issue since (the case of) Atlas Roofing …,” Kagan rejoined, “Nobody has had the, you know, chutzpah – to quote my people – to bring it up since Atlas Roofing….”
The newer justices on the Supreme Court occur to come from families whose foreign-land roots are additional behind them.
Neil McGill Gorsuch’s ancestral line goes again centuries in the US. His paternal facet, the Gorsuch line, had origins in England and Germany. His mom, the former Anne McGill, was of Irish inventory and her individuals additionally came to America a number of generations earlier. The families moved west and ultimately settled in Denver, Colorado.
“My story has its roots in the American West and is the product of the people there,” Justice Gorsuch wrote in a 2019 e-book. “I grew up a short bike ride away from my grandparents, who did as much to shape me as anyone. My paternal grandfather, John, grew up in Denver when it was a small cow town. … My maternal grandfather, Joe, grew up on the wrong side of town, in a poor Irish and Italian neighborhood….”
John Gorsuch, and his son, David, who would develop into father to the justice, had been each attorneys, as was the justice’s mom Anne. (They had three kids.) Anne Gorsuch had the distinction of previous son Neil to energy in Washington, changing into head of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1981.
Gorsuch’s spouse, Louise, was born and raised in England, and the justice has written about introducing her to the West that’s so shut to his coronary heart, together with “the proud traditions and sad history of the Native American tribes in New Mexico and Oklahoma.”
Brett Michael Kavanaugh has Irish ancestors on either side of the household.
Kavanaugh’s great-grandfather on his paternal facet, Patrick Kavanaugh, came to the US in the late 1800s and settled in Connecticut. One of his sons, Everett, had a son, additionally given the title of Everett, who married Martha Murphy, whose roots had been additionally predominantly Irish.
Martha’s dad and mom, Tom and Rose Marie Murphy, lived first in New Jersey. After Tom served in World War II in the Pacific, the household moved to Washington, DC; they’d 5 kids, Martha the oldest. Everett and Martha would develop into attorneys as they raised their solely son Brett. “When people ask what it is like to be an only child,” Kavanaugh has mentioned, “I say it depends on who your parents are. I was lucky.”
The household nonetheless identifies strongly with the residence nation, and the justice’s father, Everett, gained twin citizenship.
Last yr on St. Patrick’s Day, Justice Kavanaugh attended a celebration hosted at Vice President JD Vance’s residence with the Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin.
Amy Vivian Coney Barrett, who was born and raised in New Orleans, has Irish and French roots that return many generations in America. Her dad and mom, Michael Coney and the former Linda Vath, had seven kids, starting with daughter Amy.
Unlike different justices who’ve written latest books, Barrett has solely calmly sketched in any forebears. She admiringly talked about one set of grandparents who exchanged letters throughout World War II when the grandfather was in the US naval service. Her New Orleans heritage largely defines the justice, who has referred to its spicy delicacies and the weekslong Mardi Gras traditions.
“I’m the oldest of seven children. I now have seven children of my own, kind of replicating my parents’ life. I’m also the oldest of 29 grandchildren,” she mentioned at a Library of Congress look in March, as she described establishing benches for the kids in her prolonged household to watch the floats and catch the strings of beads thrown.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, the latest justice bears her heritage overtly. Her given title, Ketanji Onyika, is African. She mentioned it means “Lovely One.” Raised in Miami, Jackson has one youthful brother. Her dad and mom, Johnny and Ellery Brown, had been educators, and her father additionally grew to become a lawyer.
In her 2024 memoir, Jackson wrote that she’d heard household tales “that forebears had been brought from Africa chained in the holds of ships, and had been held in bondage for centuries, toiling on antebellum plantations in Georgia, Virginia, and South Carolina.”
She mentioned that her ancestors had been simpler to hint in the post-Civil War interval, when Black names started showing in the Freedmen’s Bureau and census data.
Jackson wrote: “Only then would the roots of my family tree – the Browns, Rosses, Greenes, Andersons, Rutherfords, Mayweathers, Armsteads, and others known by variations of these names – finally be inscribed in the ledger of American life.”