On Belonging, and Who Decides It: A Statement from The California Endowment on Today’s Supreme Court Decisions

In a single morning, the Supreme Court told one child she was American and told another she can’t play on her school’s sports team. Both rulings turned on the same question: who belongs? 

At The California Endowment, we will never stop fighting for all Californians, because we know that belonging is the root of health. People are well when they are part of something larger than themselves: a family, a school, a team, a neighborhood that holds them. Belonging is what turns a place into a community and a community into a source of health, where people live longer, raise their children with security, and care for one another. 

By upholding birthright citizenship, the Court affirmed that a child born here is American, as the Constitution has promised for more than a century and a half. This administration tried to erase that promise with the stroke of a pen, and it failed, because immigrant families, organizers, and legal advocates held firm and refused to let it fall. That victory is theirs, and we celebrate it. 

And then, in nearly the same breath, the Court told transgender youth they do not belong on the field with their classmates, opening the door for more states to discriminate against trans youth. 

We believe that belonging is not a privilege a government dispenses and withdraws. It is the recognition of something already true: that a newborn is no less American because of where their parents were born, that a young person is no less worthy for being trans. A court can affirm a legal opinion or refuse it. It cannot make it false, and it does not change how we will continue to show up for one another. 

This is why we do not measure days like today only in wins and losses. Birthright citizenship held today because, for generations, people refused to let it fall. We will undo the exclusion of trans young people the same way, with the same stubborn insistence that every person deserves fundamental rights and protections regardless of where their parents were born or how they identify.  

To our immigrant neighbors, friends and family, and to every trans young person: you were never waiting on a court to tell you that you belong. Neither were we. You are home. We are with you. And we will continue the fight to ensure all Californians belong.