Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson included the TikTok slang phrase “understood the assignment” in her concurring opinion in the Supreme Court's major birthright citizenship ruling issued Tuesday.
The Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Barbara to uphold traditional birthright citizenship and strike down President Donald Trump's executive order denying automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to parents who are illegally present or here on temporary visas.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, while Justice Jackson filed a concurring opinion that went further in defending the broad interpretation of the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause.
In her concurrence, Justice Jackson used the phrase to describe those who championed the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War, writing that they “understood the assignment” in their efforts to create a broad interpretation of the Citizenship Clause.
The phrase is widely used on social media, particularly by Gen Z, to mean someone has fully grasped and executed what was expected of them.
Conservatives have expressed outrage over the use of casual internet slang in a formal decision, viewing it as a sign of a serious decline in the Court's seriousness.
Many have also noted the excessive use of em dashes in the opinion, speculating that it may have been written, at least in part, by AI.
President Trump has long argued that birthright citizenship was intended for the children of freed slaves following the Civil War, not as a reward for illegal entry or birth tourism.
