By Jean Lantz Reisz
For more than 150 years, almost all people who were born within U.S. territory automatically received citizenship – regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order on birthright citizenship – stating that children born in the U.S. to parents who are not in the country legally, or who are not permanent residents, cannot receive citizenship – threatens to upend this precedent.
The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the case on May 15, 2025.
This comes after federal judges in three cases that took place in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington banned Trump’s order from going into effect, determining that the president cannot change or limit the Constitution by executive order.
The Trump administration has argued that courts previously did not interpret the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause correctly. But the administration’s argument in its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court is different. The administration is asking the Supreme Court to narrow the federal judges’ bans on implementing the order so their rulings apply only to the noncitizen plaintiffs named in those specific cases. If the Supreme Court justices agree, that could mean Trump’s executive order could apply to all of the other noncitizens not named in the cases at hand.
The president has broad powers when enforcing immigration laws and has the most discretion to use this authority when immigration is a national security issue.
At the same time, as an immigration law scholar, I understand that the president’s immigration power is limited by federal laws and the Constitution. American citizenship is a right that is spelled out in the Constitution – and the Constitution does not give the president the power to change how someone gets citizenship in the country.
Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images
What the Constitution says about birthright citizenship
Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment citizenship clause states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. …”
There are currently two exceptions to who can receive birthright citizenship: children of war enemies who are occupying the U.S. and children of noncitizens working as foreign diplomats in the U.S.
Trump’s executive order states there is now a third exception – the child of a mother who is living in the country without legal authorization, or has a temporary visa, if the father is also not a lawful permanent resident or U.S. citizen.
Since Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, multiple states, cities, immigration rights organizations and private individuals, including pregnant mothers, have sued Trump. They have also sued the government agencies he instructed to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to noncitizens.
If the president’s executive order were to fully take effect, hundreds of thousands of babies born in the U.S. would be living in the country illegally. They could be deported by the U.S. government and would potentially be stateless, meaning without citizenship in any country.
If these babies stayed in the U.S., they would also be denied basic rights and privileges given to U.S. citizens, such as government-provided health care insurance and legal identification documents.
Once these children became adolescents and then adults, they could not receive federal financial aid for education, may not be eligible to legally work and could not vote.
This would create a vast and indefinitely growing population of noncitizens who are born and raised in the U.S. but do not have the legal right to stay there.
What led to the 14th Amendment
In 1868, the required 28 of the then 37 U.S. states ratified the 14th Amendment. This ensured that certain states did not deny citizenship to freed former slaves, who were of African descent and forcibly sent to the U.S., as well as their children.
About 30 years later, a U.S.-born man of Chinese descent named Wong Kim Ark was returning home to San Francisco after visiting his parents in China. U.S. authorities would not let him leave a steamship docked in the San Francisco harbor and enter the U.S.
Government officials prevented his entry under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a discriminatory law that barred Chinese nationals from entering the U.S. and becoming naturalized citizens, among other restrictions.
Wong argued that he was a U.S. citizen at birth and not barred by the exclusion laws.
The Supreme Court, albeit not unanimously, decided in 1898 that Wong was a citizen, since he was born in a U.S. territory.
The Supreme Court noted that the framers of the 14th Amendment relied on the British legal principle of “jus soli,” a Latin term meaning right of soil, to give automatic citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. Under jus soli, any person born within the kingdom of the British king was a citizen of that kingdom.
U.S. courts and lawmakers have similarly interpreted the 14th Amendment to automatically give citizenship to all children born in the U.S., even if their parents are immigrants.
In 1952, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which incorporated language from the 14th Amendment into immigration law. This included the phrase that “any person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a “citizen of the United States at birth.”
The 1952 statute did not exclude children born to immigrants living in the U.S. without legal authorization or immigrants with a temporary visa.
In 1995, the Office of Legal Counsel for the Department of Justice evaluated proposed federal legislation that would deny birthright citizenship to certain children, based on their parents’ immigration status. The Department of Justice determined the legislation would be “unquestionably unconstitutional” and it did not become law.
Less than 10 years later, the Supreme Court recognized in 2004 that accused Taliban fighter Yasser Hamdi had certain rights as a U.S. citizen. Hamdi was born in Louisiana to Saudi Arabian parents who had temporary visas.
National Archives/Interim Archives/Getty Images
Trump’s 14th Amendment claims
Whether Trump’s executive order ultimately survives depends on how the Supreme Court interprets the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment.
The Trump administration argues that this phrase was never meant to include the children of immigrants who were living in the U.S. without legal authorization or with temporary visas. The administration also says the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means more than just being born in U.S. territory. It means having undivided sovereign allegiance to the U.S. government.
The Trump administration argues that U.S.-born children of noncitizens owe allegiance to a different country.
This is an old argument, based on the dissenting opinion in the Wong Kim Ark case in 1898. The Supreme Court already rejected this argument in that case.
The courts are following historical precedent
Three federal judges in the cases before the Supreme Court all determined in 2025 that Trump’s executive order is likely unconstitutional.
The Washington judge, for example, said in February that the administration was rehashing a century-old losing argument.
The appellate courts have also denied the government’s requests to change the preliminary injunctions.
For over a century, the federal government has recognized that nearly every child born in the U.S., regardless of who their parents are, automatically becomes a U.S. citizen.
Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether there is merit to the Trump administration’s technical argument that the federal judges’ block on its executive order should apply to plaintiffs in the three cases – an option that could permit the executive order to apply to all other noncitizens, even if it is unconstitutional.
Whether the executive order itself is constitutional would be a question left for a later date. However, that date may come after the executive order causes irreversible damage to U.S. citizens.
Jean Lantz Reisz is Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of the USC Immigration Clinic at the University of Southern California.
Sherry says
This from highly revered Joyce Vance:
The stakes are high, even though the Supreme Court won’t be deciding, at least not yet, whether Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship is constitutional.
Joyce Vance
May 15
READ IN APP
Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Birthright Citizenship Case, Trump v. Casa, Inc. We’re here because Donald Trump is intent on usurping as much of the power of government as he can into his own hands. And what is more fundamental than assigning citizenship? We know that Trump wants people from Mexico, Central America, South America, the Middle East, and Asia out of the country. But he’s okay with white Afrikaners from South Africa, even willing to bring them in, give them benefits, and put them on a fast track to citizenship. Deporting people to gulags in El Salvador and abducting students and others from their neighborhoods are part and parcel of this. Trump is, quite literally, trying to define the complexion of America.
Tomorrow morning, the Supreme Court takes up three cases consolidated as Trump v. CASA, Inc. I wrote to you about the case Sunday evening. It’s notable because although we call this the “birthright citizenship case,” the Court will not be considering whether Trump’s use of an executive order to strike it from the Bill of Rights will pass muster. If you missed the newsletter on Sunday, it explains they will be considering whether a federal district judge in one district can issue an injunction that is binding on the entire country.
Even though the issue in front of the Supreme Court tomorrow isn’t whether Donald Trump can do away with birthright citizenship, it’s worth our time to consider that underlying issue ahead of tomorrow’s oral argument. It may well come up in questioning; we may even get hints about how one or more judges are leaning. It’s also important to consider the context tomorrow, the reason these parties are in front of the Supreme Court in this case. They’re there because Donald Trump thinks he, and he alone, can walk beyond the boundaries set by our Constitution and our laws and reshape the country in his own image. Last night we discussed the Supreme Court’s tolerance for Donald Trump right up to the point where the security of federal judges is at stake. Tomorrow, we may learn about their patience with his abandonment of the pretense of caring about the rule of law when it interferes with policies he wants to put in place, or really, as we watch him operate, deals that he wants to do.
The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” It’s the source of “birthright citizenship,” which makes anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of the immigration status of their parents, a citizen.
So how does Trump get around that? His lawyers have seized on some of the language in the amendment, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” It has historically been used to carve out limited exceptions to birthright citizenship, like the one for children of foreign diplomats who are born while their parents are working in the United States. Because diplomats and their families are not “subject to” U.S. jurisdiction and have immunity from criminal prosecution and even civil suits for official acts, their children, even if born here, do not become U.S. citizens. The exception has been narrowly construed since the provision was adopted. Donald Trump’s effort to excise it from the Constitution is inconsistent with our history and tradition in this regard.
Congress ratified the 14th Amendment in July 1868 after the Civil War ended, ensuring that birthright citizenship would protect former slaves and their children by granting them U.S. citizenship. Before that, the Supreme Court had ruled in the notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision that enslaved people and their descendants were not citizens, were not eligible to become citizens, and were not entitled to any protection under U.S. laws. The 13th and 14th Amendments overruled Dred Scott, and the promise of automatic citizenship they carry for those born in this country has endured. It has been applied for 155 years and counting, including by the Supreme Court, without regard to the parents’ immigration status. The 14th Amendment prohibits states from overriding the privileges it provides, in this case citizenship, or from enforcing laws that would revoke birthright citizenship.
According to Donald Trump, “We’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous.” That’s what he told NBC’s Kristen Welker during an interview for “Meet the Press.” But his executive order doing away with birthright citizenship is inconsistent with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, which the Supreme Court has always interpreted as doing precisely what its language suggests: guaranteeing citizenship to people born in this country.
Trump himself has given away much of the game by bringing Afrikaners, white South Africans who will receive refugee status and a fast track toward citizenship, into the country while others fleeing persecution and war are being rejected. The racism is transparent. There is no evidence to support Trump’s claims that Afrikaners’ land is being taken away from them by South Africa’s majority Black government.
Now it’s up to the Supreme Court. Tomorrow, they’ll consider the nationwide injunction issue in this case, but it will inevitably be back for them to make the call about whether Trump can undo the law, even after taking an oath to uphold it. For seven of the Justices, that should be a bridge too far, but it’s hard to predict anything with this Court. We may have a better sense after tomorrow’s argument.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
DaleL says
The Constitutional text reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. …” There are two conditions for birthright citizenship. The first is obviously that the person be born in the United States. It is the question as to whether the baby/child of a non-citizen is “…subject to the jurisdiction…” of the United States.
It might seem that the simple answer is “yes”. After all, the U.S. and States have regulations that require medical tests for all newborns and mandatory vaccinations. These regulations actually requirements to the parent(s) and medical providers. The newborn or any child is subject to their parent or guardian. My Lay opinion is that if the person with the custody of a child is not a US citizen and the child is deported with them, the child was never directly subject to US jurisdiction. The distinction is tricky though. Once the child reaches adulthood, they would need to show how they directly (not indirectly through the parent) were subject to US jurisdiction prior to their deportation with their parent to claim birthright citizenship.
If the child is not deported with their parent, but remains in the US, then at some point they will be subject to US jurisdiction and qualify for birthright citizenship. Certainly once they are subject to US criminal law, they would be US citizens. It could mean that a person born in the US, deported with their parent, who later enters the US illegally, would acquire US citizenship upon being arrested by US Immigration!
Section 5 of the 14th Amendment reads: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” It would be helpful if Congress would clarify this citizenship distinction by legislation.
Maryanne says
No child of any illegal born on American soil is an American citizen. And it is about time that this issue WILL BE SOLVED TODAY by the Supreme Court, anchor kids DO contribute to delinquency in this country because of their citizenship and this WILL BE STOPPED TODAY
Skibum says
Thank you, Sherry, for reposting Joyce Vance’s take on what is a hugely important constitutional issue. The occupier of our WH is attempting to pick and choose which foreigners to allow into our country and which ones to unconstitutionally detain, ship out on planes without one scintilla of due process in order to imprison them in another country where that country’s leader has been paid a multi-million dollar “gift” of our taxpayer money, even without congressional approval.
This racist convicted felon who is in power here makes his decisions on who can come into our country and who to eject based on their SKIN COLOR! While targeting dark skinned, legally protected immigrants who are in the U.S., apparently from those “shithole countries” that drumph so despises, he then goes out of his way to publicly allow planes to bring white Afrikaners to America so his jaded and complicit administration officials can fast-track their citizenship applications. If this is not the epitome of blatant racism and further evidence of him weaponizing our immigration system including the federal officers of ICE, then what is it?
It is almost hope beyond hope that our Supreme Court will make the constitutionally correct decision when they do rule on this case, because the convicted felon president has caused so much destruction to this nation’s norms by his unethical and unconstitutional behavior during both times he occupied the WH, of course with the approval and total absence of congressional oversight and action while the GOP has been in control of both houses. This will be one more large crack in our nation’s hold on democracy if the Supreme Court’s majority of drumph appointees decide to rule in the felon president’s favor.
Sherry says
@ maryanne. . . shall we go back in history and deport the descendants of all those born here of illegal immigrants? After all, millions came here under various refugee agreements from those “liberal” Presidential administrations. What about those (non-white) Cuban refugees from the Kennedy era? Huh? Get rid of each and every person here who is not lily white and Christian, right maryanne? We can let in the “WHITE” South Africans, like trump is doing though, right maryanne?
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
@ Maryanne says
“No child of any illegal born on American soil is an American citizen. And it is about time that this issue WILL BE SOLVED TODAY by the Supreme Court, anchor kids DO contribute to delinquency in this country because of their citizenship and this WILL BE STOPPED TODAY”
Would your statement hold for Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal and countless other GOP in government jobs as well? What’s different about their parents than what’s going on today, they may have come here legally yet didn’t get citizenship immediately. Pretty much like many commenters on here, how their great ancestors arrived in the United States of America, had to wait for citizenship and had children born while waiting. Maybe the good old U.S. of A. should check everyone’s lineage (even Maryanne’s) to see what the status was after arrival of their immigrant relatives.
From August 20th 2015 NBC News:
Jindal’s parents arrived in the United States from India in 1971, a few months before he was born. They traveled on a green card secured through Jindal’s father, an engineer who qualified for a visa for the “professional or highly skilled.”
Rubio, whose rise from humble beginnings to political prestige is a key part of his campaign pitch, is the son of two Cuban parents who were in the country legally — but also not as citizens — at the time that Rubio was born in Miami in 1971. (They became naturalized in 1975.)
Ben Hogarth says
I’d like to “correct” an assertion a previous commenter (DaleL) made when they said:
“The Constitutional text reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. …” There are two conditions for birthright citizenship. The first is obviously that the person be born in the United States. It is the question as to whether the baby/child of a non-citizen is “…subject to the jurisdiction…” of the United States.”
This is a misreading of the text likely because the text has been taken in a silo and out of historical and larger constitutional context. The 14th amendment is an amendment TO the U.S. Constitution. That means it modifies previous or existing constitutional text and does not simply override everything. The amendment language stating a person “must be born or naturalized in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is not stating two separate measures of citizenship. They do not have to be a U.S. citizen by birth / naturalization AND also be subject to the U.S. jurisdiction. All persons born in the U.S. and/or that have been naturalized by the U.S. ARE subject to our jurisdiction. This jurisdiction can extend beyond our boundaries because as a U.S. citizen, the idea is that you can’t just not be and go somewhere else. All other nations will recognize you as having a U.S. citizenship.
Constitutionally, BEING ON US SOIL MAKES YOU SUBJECT TO OUR JURISDICTION. You cannot waive due process, deport someone who already has obtained that official status, and then claim they can’t be citizens because they are no longer subject to our jurisdiction once we deport them. This is a crime. It’s a crime against humanity not just a crime against the Constitution.
If someone is a U.S. citizen, they are subject to U.S. jurisdiction. There is no having U.S. citizenship and then not being subject thereto. If you are in another country as a U.S. citizen, you are subject to your own nations jurisdiction as well as the nation you are a guest in. If you have diplomatic immunity, you get protection from jurisdiction of foreign nations by your home nation (U.S. in this case) as taking full ownership over your actions and deeds. This is just another example of how U.S. jurisdiction applies to U.S. citizens abroad.
Anyone arguing that “subject to U.S. jurisdiction” is a separate measure for citizenship is flat wrong and purposefully misconstruing constitutional history and law to fit a rather malicious and evil end.
Sherry says
Thank you Nephew of Uncle Sam. . . I was actually thinking the same thing about maryanne’s ancestors. Where they actually admitted to this country under what trump would RULE as “legally”? As a descendent of possible ancestors that entered the USA illegally, should she be deported? Can maryanne “prove” that she is legally a US citizen under trump’s rules?
Kennan says
Thanks Sherry,
Unless your name is Running Bear or Kicking Bird, you’re just renting space with the rest of us. There used to be a “pathway to citizenship”, now it’s just about saying no to immigration and scaring your base into thinking BROWN people are violent criminals. It’s literally become that simple. While all this is happening Trump gives refugee status to white AFRIKAANS that he says, “are victims of White Genocide “. WTF????!??? These people refuse to assimilate to the equality based foundation of a modern South Africa. Why? Because they are racists like our President, who made up stories about white farmers being killed by blacks!!!
Elon Musk has his head so far up Trump’s ass, I’m surprised he doesn’t have two sets of teeth.
Sherry says
I can speak factually about living conditions in South Africa. We have travelled in many areas of SA during our 5 visits in the past 12 years. Each visit was for 2-3 months. While we stayed primarily in the homes of the highly privileged “white” citizens, we even stayed in a “black” B&B in the high end part of a township (a euphemism for poor “black” encampments run by the governments).
Segregation is absolute in SA! The “whites” live in upper middle to very high end regions, completely “separate” from the “NATIVE black skinned” people. Even with the end of apart ide it is the “white” people who have the unofficial power and who “rule” psychologically over the “blacks”. Blatant racism against “blacks” is still quite common.
For tip of the iceberg example, I personally witnessed a macho “white” man dressing down a “black” butcher in a large high end “white” supermarket. Throughout his shouting tirade the “white” man called the middle aged butcher “Boy”. . . something about making sure the lamb roast was lean. The butcher cowered in silence. I was so shocked that I personally apologized to the butcher. . . who meekly said “I am OK mamma, how can I help you”. The butucher was extremely lucky to have that job.
I can tell other stories about the terrible living conditions in the townships. . . where millions of “black Africans” manage to exist. . . but, it is painfully beyond description. Just imagine living many years without a toilet. . . defecating in plastic bags and then putting them out for collection. That will give you just a tiny idea of “township” living.
Therefore, trump’s acceptance of “WHITE” refugees from SA is nothing short of an atrocity!
Skibum says
Isn’t it interesting as well as so predictable that there have been incidents that thankfully have been reported in some news briefs describing interactions between Native American individuals and racist maga mush brains, yelling at the Native Americans to get the hell out of America and go back to where they came from!!! You can’t make this shit up!
Sherry says
Please forgive all the typos. . . internet access from here in Yellowstone is spotty at best. No opportunity to correct anything.
Kennan says
Wow Sherry, as much as things change I guess they stay the same. Thank you for that perspective.
Skibum says
Sherry, while reading your descriptors of how bad living conditions are for South Africa’s black citizens, I can’t say I am surprised or even shocked having already formed an opinion of the white Afrikkaner depravity and horrible treatment of that country’s majority black people. One would like to believe that Elon Musk, the richest man in the world who was born and raised in South Africa, would still have some emotional attachment to his home country and even if not from an ethical or moral standpoint might actually wish somehow to improve the living conditions for people in the land where he was born. But no, he is reported to be one of the stingiest, most anti-philanthropic pieces of crap on the planet. Yes, he could be thought of as drumph’s twin brother from another mother! It really is disturbing that a man with so much wealth and the amazing aptitude for innovation and creativity that he has is squandered in self-enrichment and personal desire with absolutely no thoughts or actions to give back to needy people in his home country or helping those in need through charitable foundations. It is despicable… exactly the kind of horrible examples of humans that drumph admires and emulates. But neither of these “men” will be taking their riches with them, and both of their bodies will rot in the ground just like the rest of humankind, and I suspect and hope with eternal legacies of righteous indignation from future generations.
Sherry says
Dear Kennan and Skibum. . . thank you for reading my postings.
This article on Musk’s childhood, from the Guardian, was enlightening (not surprising) to me:
The billionaire and now Trump adviser grew up amid the collapse of white rule, attending an all-white school and then a more liberal one
Rachel Savage
Rachel Savage in Pretoria
Mon 10 Mar 2025 09.35 EDT
With an imposing double-winged redbrick main building, and school songs lifted directly from Harrow’s songbook, Pretoria boys high school is every inch the South African mirror of the English private schools it was founded in 1901 to imitate.
Elon Musk, who has rapidly become one of the most powerful people in US politics, spent his final school years in the 1980s as a day pupil on the lush, tree-filled campus in South Africa’s capital, close to his father’s large detached home in Waterkloof, a wealthy Pretoria suburb shaded by purple jacaranda blossoms in spring.
South Africa was rocked by uprisings as apartheid entered its dying years. In 1984, black townships across the country revolted. By 1986, the white minority government had imposed a state of emergency. But in the segregated white enclaves, life was affluent and peaceful.
“While the country as a whole was very much in flames and in turmoil, we were blissfully very safe in our little leafy suburbs, going about our very normal life,” said Jonathan Stewart, who was a year above Musk at Pretoria boys, which also counts the Labour politician Peter Hain, the Booker prize-winning novelist Damon Galgut and the murderer and Paralympian Oscar Pistorius among its former pupils.
“You had this wealthy set, in relative terms, and everybody else was excluded.”
Musk, who was born in Pretoria in 1971, railed on his social media platform X last month against the “openly racist laws” of the country of his birth and responded “yes” to the statement: “White South Africans are being persecuted for their race in their home country.”
After the posts by the man now at the helm of Donald Trump’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a special group Trump has created, the US president signed an executive order accusing South Africa’s government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners, citing a law allowing land to be expropriated in certain circumstances. The order cut aid to South Africa, which receives 17% of its HIV/Aids budget from the US, and offered asylum to Afrikaners.
It was not clear the extent to which Musk, who left South Africa in 1989 for his mother’s country, Canada, and then went to the US, had a direct hand in encouraging Trump to issue the order.
Trump has taken an interest in the alleged persecution of white South Africans since his first presidency, when an Afrikaner rights group travelled to the US to claim, FALSELY, that white farmers were being murdered for their land with the complicity of the government. Trump saw one of the group’s leaders interviewed on Fox News and tweeted his support.
Trump has also been influenced by other interests, including US groups critical of South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) over the war in Gaza, which he referred to in his executive order.
But with Musk now among Trump’s closest advisers, it is unlikely he has not made his views known to the president, given they are also tied up with his business interests in South Africa.
Musk has claimed that land reform laws, in a country where the white minority, who make up just 7% of South Africa’s population, still own more than 70% of agricultural land, are racist and amount to theft. He has endorsed claims that the killings of white farmers amount to genocide; research suggests the crimes are financially motivated.
Musk’s attacks have ratcheted up at a time when he is in a dispute with the South African government about affirmative action laws, as he tries to sell his Starlink satellite network in the country. The world’s richest man objects to a law requiring that investors in the telecoms sector provide 30% of the equity in the South African part of the enterprise to Black-owned businesses.
Trump’s executive order will add to the pressure on South Africa’s government to exempt Musk from the Black empowerment laws.
X’s press team and Musk’s lawyer did not respond to interview requests or emailed questions.
To what extent Musk’s years growing up under the collapsing apartheid regime influenced his positions today, from making what looked like a Nazi salute – a characterisation he rejects – at Trump’s inauguration celebrations in January to his embrace of far-right political parties such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, remains an open debate.
White, English-speaking South Africans such as Musk’s family benefited from apartheid’s racial hierarchy but lived mostly separate lives from the ruling Afrikaners.
Musk spent the first two years of South Africa’s five high school years at the all-white Bryanston high school in Johannesburg’s leafy northern suburbs. Founded in 1968, it is a mixed-sex, English-language, fee-paying state school, made up of rectangular mid-century buildings.
Like South Africa then and now, Bryanston high was sports mad. “It was a little bit like when you think of American society,” said Lesley Burns, who finished at the school in 1984, Musk’s first year. “There were all the jocks and the popular guys in the football team.”
Musk, who was on the school’s chess team in 1985, was viciously bullied. The hounding culminated with him being thrown down a set of stairs, beaten so badly that he was hospitalised. The school declined an interview.
Musk’s father moved him and his brother, Kimbal, to Pretoria boys, where he was well liked, according to Gideon Fourie, who had computer science classes with Musk.
“He was a very average personality,” Fourie said. “He wasn’t in any way like a super jock, or a super nerd, or a super punk … He had a group of friends.”
South African media were subjected to strict government censorship. Newspapers would appear with censored sections blacked out, particularly reports of the growing unrest in the townships and mass arrests, until those were also banned.
In contrast, the fee-paying Pretoria boys was liberal, for its time. In 1981 it became the first government school to admit a Black pupil. The then headteacher, Malcolm Armstrong, used a loophole that allowed it to let in the sons of diplomats from the “homelands” within South Africa that the apartheid system claimed were independent states.
“Armstrong even defied the authorities by meeting with the ANC [African National Congress] in Dakar while it was still banned,” said Patrick Conroy, who was in Kimbal’s year, two years below Musk. “He frequently addressed our school assemblies, emphasising the importance of democracy, human rights and social justice.”
The school’s current headteacher, Gregary Hassenkamp, was also in Kimbal’s year and has similar memories of his predecessor, although he noted that not all teachers shared Armstrong’s liberal views.
Gregary Hassenkamp, Pretoria boys school’s current headteacher.
“I remember him forcing boys to think about the country in which we lived and the attitudes we had,” Hassenkamp said in an interview in his wood-panelled office, wearing a flowing black gown and a tie and socks in the school’s red, white and green colours.
Musk has previously described himself as “not a conservative” and backed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election going back to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, until he moved to the right. But Musk is clearly suspicious of democracy and the leaders it produces.
In the 1930s, his grandfather headed an anti-democratic fringe political movement in Canada with fascist overtones, which campaigned for government by elite technocrats. He then moved to apartheid South Africa because the racist system appealed to him.
Musk now appears happy to embrace the US version of the “strongman” ruler by backing Trump’s claim that the will of the president is paramount.
Some of Musk’s school peers speculated that his current views of South Africa may be influenced by his missing out on the ups and downs of the negotiations to end apartheid and the “miracle” of Nelson Mandela becoming the country’s first Black president in 1994.
Since then, the governments led by Mandela’s ANC party have failed to address the world’s worst economic inequality. While its Black economic empowerment policies offer tax breaks and state contracts to Black-owned companies, Black people are five times likelier than white people to be unemployed. South Africa also has one of the world’s highest murder rates.
It is not uncommon to hear white South Africans say they are being discriminated against, often citing affirmative action laws. In mid-February, hundreds gathered outside the US embassy in Pretoria carrying signs with slogans such as “Thank God for President Trump” and “Make South Africa Great Again”.
While it is rare to hear white South Africans say they want a return to apartheid, it is also not uncommon to hear older people express nostalgia for that time.
“It was a good time, because we had no crime. There were no problems. People, Blacks and whites, got on very well with each other,” Errol Musk said in a video interview from his spacious Cape Town home, when asked about his son Elon’s childhood. “Everything worked. That’s the reality. Of course people don’t want to hear that, but that’s the truth.”
Musk and his two younger full siblings, Kimbal and Tosca, have had a tumultuous relationship with their father. Kimbal told Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson that their father would scream at them for two to three hours, calling them worthless and pathetic. Their mother, Maye, has accused him of physical abuse.
“It’s rubbish,” Errol said when asked about the allegations, which he has repeatedly denied.
The brothers became estranged from their father in 2017, not for the first time, when he had a child with his 30-year-old stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout, according to Isaacson. In Errol’s telling, they got angry with him when he expressed his support for Trump in 2016, at a party in Cape Town they threw for his 70th and Musk’s 45th birthdays.
“Things changed when Biden came in and Elon realised they’re trying to destroy America,” Errol said. “Now we exchange messages about every day. Of course, he’s not always able to answer, so his PA will answer me.”
Additional reporting by Chris McGreal
This article was amended on 11 March 2025. An earlier version referred to a law requiring foreign investors in the telecoms sector to provide 30% of the equity in the South African part of the enterprise to Black-owned businesses. This law applies to all investors, foreign and domestic.
Sherry says
In my personal opinion people like trump and musk, who had such an extremely wealthy upbringing, simply cannot relate to the daily lives of even “middle class” families. They likely do not see themselves as privileged at all. “Average/Poor” people are acknowledged intellectually, but humans in those classes are useful only as tools (votes) for access to their perceived rightful power.
Musk has a double dose of psychological abnormality in that he lives with Asperger’s Syndrome which may make him prone to Nihilism. Therefore, having true empathy for the terrible plight of native black South Africans is likely completely impossible for him.
It’s beyond time for each and every one of us to understand that people like trump and musk likely see us merely as bothersome insects who are no more than annoying stepping stones to their insecure, self serving universal greatness.
Kennan says
Very valuable. Informative, if not sad too. Learned behaviors, white privilege, and a warped sense of self worth.
WELL DONE SHERRY!
Sherry says
Thank you so much Kennan! Yes, very sad . . . especially for us all who are now forced to live with the decisions of such mentally unhealthy people.
Joe D says
Well…Maryanne…
You are CERTAINLY entitled to your opinion, but according to the US Constitution (that still exits today, or has the Trump administration and their lawyers managed to repeal it in the BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL lurching through Congress this week)?…you’re WRONG.
Secondly, I would like you to document your statement that immigrant children are more delinquent than the children of LEGAL US citizens…please base those on whose FACTS (not opinions) from a VERIFIABLE NEWS SOURCE…not some blog or internet post. I HIGHLY doubt you can do this.
I also want you to remember, that other than the Native American people, the Native people in Alaska, and Mexican descendants in the transferred “territory” of previously MEXICAN TEXAS …YOU and I are all descendants of immigrants ( yours and mine just arrived before they SHUT THE DOOR).
One half of my Grandfather’s siblings were born in Germany, the other half (including my Grandfather) were born in the US…I’m not sure when my German/French great grandparents technically became US citizens. The US Constitution granted my grandfather BIRTHRIGHT citizenship.