Tipsheet

This Insane Line in Ketanji Brown Jackson's Birthright Opinion Is Making the Court a Laughing Stock

Joseph Chalfant
Joseph Chalfant  |  June 30, 2026 6:00 PM

As if the birthright citizenship case wasn’t abhorrent enough, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson managed to find a way to make it even more cringeworthy.

Jackson decided that the landmark case that will be examined in law school classes for the next generation was the moment to drop the hyper-online Gen Z parlance of “understood the assignment” in a decision that is so baffling that one would immediately assume that it has to be fake.

Unfortunately for legal scholars, the line is very real. Hidden away in the third paragraph of Jackson’s opinion, buried on the 33rd page of the decision, you can find the travesty.

“In the aftermath of the Civil War, those who championed the Fourteenth Amendment—both within and beyond Congress—understood the assignment,” Jackson wrote. As you can imagine, the choice didn’t receive the warmest of welcomes.

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first time that Jackson has pulled something like this. Last year, she employed the use of a “wait for it” in a case that found that lower courts didn’t have the power to issue universal injunctions.

If there’s one thing Americans can take away from Jackson’s tenure on the Supreme Court, it’s that truly anyone can become a SCOTUS justice.