Birthright Citizenship Reaches the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court is once again being asked a question that should have been settled more than a century ago: who counts as an American. At issue is President Trump’s Executive Order 14160, which seeks to deny citizenship to children born in the United States after February 19, 2025, unless both parents are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents at the time of said child’s birth.
This order blatantly promotes Trump’s racially-motivated anti-immigration agenda and dismantles the long-standing principles of equality and representative liberty under the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution itself.
The Constitution is clear on this, “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.” Section 1401(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act reinforces the Fourteenth Amendment: “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof…shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” Birthright citizenship, therefore, can be regarded as one of the United States’ most fundamental rights and sacrosanct by that logic.
On June 27, 2025, The Court decided Trump v. CASA, Inc., which consolidated three cases that sought injunctive relief to prevent enforcement of Trump’s executive order. Lower courts found in favor of the plaintiffs seeking relief and extended their ruling to all people born in the United States. The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the government and limited the ability of federal courts to extrapolate nationwide injunctions from local or regional petitions. The Supreme Court did not issue a decision on the legality of the executive order itself, focusing instead on the procedural question of whether the trial courts erred in entering nationwide injunctions against enforcement of the executive order.
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, a group of children and their guardians filed a class action in the District Court of New Hampshire against President Trump, in which they alleged that the executive order violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the Immigration Nationality Act. The district court recognized a limited class of children to whom the citizenship order applies, but excluded their parents. Thus, the case Trump v. Barbara was initiated.
The plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction from enforcement of the executive order. According to U.S. law, a preliminary injunction must be granted if the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits, likely to suffer irreparable harm without an injunction, carries the balance of equities in their favor, and holds a public interest in favor of the injunction. The district court granted the injunction, and Trump filed a writ of certiorari in response. Trump filed the writ before the lower court’s final judgement, thereby allowing the Supreme Court to hear the case without first referring it to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court granted Trump’s writ on December 5, 2025, and oral arguments took place on April 1 2026.
The main argument presented by the government centers around the phrasing of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which grants citizenship to those born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. Trump hides behind a semantic technicality, making the absurd argument that not everyone born in the U.S. is politically subject to its jurisdiction, which the government argues requires primary allegiance to the U.S. From this perspective, children born to temporary or undocumented immigrants fall outside the Constitution’s protections. The order limits citizenship to children of aliens with a permanent, lawful domicile in the U.S. The government argues that children of temporarily present aliens do not qualify for birthright protection, as they lack domicile and political allegiance to the U.S.
This interpretation is legally unsound and historically unsupported. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, The Supreme Court affirmed that a child born to aliens domiciled in the U.S. was a citizen. The decision did not depend on parents’ permanent status or domicile, but on the fundamental principle that birth within U.S. territory confers citizenship,
This ridiculous hair-splitting logic implies that people who do not already have permanent status in the U.S. are somehow less loyal to the country. The original plaintiffs argued in response that the jurisdiction language merely excludes English common law exceptions, such as children of foreign ambassadors and enemies of the United States. Barbara, et al., further argue that, under English common law, both temporarily present aliens and their children had allegiance to the King, regardless of their citizenship. They further reason that no explicit domicile requirement exists, as is present in other constitutional matters pertaining to states’ rights. As for Wong Kim Ark, the plaintiffs argue that the Court itself states that domicile was not dispositive in that case.
The legal definition of domicile is “residence with intent to remain.” As the plaintiffs argue, most temporary residents, including those unlawfully present, satisfy this definition. Furthermore, our founding documents advocate passionately for the belief that all human beings are created equal. Therefore, all people born on American soil must be treated equally and guaranteed the same rights at birth, including citizenship as the means to access those rights. Children should not have to prove that they belong.
The Supreme Court has a rare opportunity to send a message to the Trump administration: that they do not get to decide who is or is not good enough to be a U.S. citizen. In light of the Trump administration’s recent reduction of refugee admissions, with the exception of European origin South Africans, it has become alarmingly clear that the executive wants to promote European supremacy by reducing the non-European voting population. Not surprising, given the overwhelmingly European demographics of Trump’s MAGA base.
