SCOTUS Affirms Birthright Citizenship
Outside the Supreme Court Tuesday morning, crowds gathered in anticipation of the ruling on Trump v. Barbara. Cheers broke from the multitude when the court upheld lower courts’ decisions to strike down Trump’s controversial 2025 Executive Order that sought to end birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants and those on temporary visas. In the decision, Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented.
“At LULAC, we uphold the Constitution and the 14th Amendment,” said Paulina Vargas, a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens celebrating outside the Supreme Court when the decision came down. “Today, the court proved it could do the same.”
Though six justices voted against the administration, only five fully embraced the majority’s constitutional reasoning. Justice Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment but dissented in part, arguing the EO is unlawful only because it conflicts with an existing federal statute, not because the Constitution prevents Congress from narrowing birthright citizenship. In his view, Congress remains free to legislate new exceptions, an opening that could shape the continuing political fight over birthright citizenship.
Trump v. Barbara centers around the 14th amendment’s citizenship clause. Ratified in the wake of the Civil War, the clause overruled the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, which had denied citizenship to formerly enslaved black Americans. For more than a century, it was understood to grant citizenship to anyone “born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
The Trump administration argued that the citizenship clause’s sponsors intended for political jurisdiction, not territorial jurisdiction, to be cause for birthright citizenship. Territorial jurisdiction applies to anyone physically present in the U.S., while political jurisdiction requires a deeper, more permanent allegiance.
The administration asserts that the clause was originally intended to extend citizenship to formerly enslaved people, not to the children of foreign nationals with no ties to the U.S.
“That was the understanding for the first 70 years of the 14th Amendment being in place. It was acknowledged by the courts, by the federal government, by law professors in law review articles – it was only during the Franklin Roosevelt administration that by administrative fiat they suddenly started abandoning that [subject to the jurisdiction thereof] requirement,” Senior Legal Fellow at Advancing American Freedom Hans von Spakovsky told RealClearPolitics.
The plaintiff countered that this misinterprets the clause. They point to United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 case that granted citizenship to a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents who were barred from becoming U.S. citizens.
“The only exceptions the ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ language was meant to apply to were children born to diplomats, children born to invading occupying armies, and children born within Indian tribes – and all of those groups operate with a quasi-sovereign nature,” Amanda Frost, Director of the Immigration, Migration and Human Rights Program at UVA Law explained to RCP.
Critics of the administration’s stance also argue that undocumented immigrants meet the domicile standard: They live in the United States and have no plan to leave.
“The Trump administration’s argument seems to go so far that dual citizens, green card holders, would also seem to lack pure allegiance to the United States, but even the Trump administration doesn’t claim they shouldn’t be citizens – so it’s a very inconsistent argument,” Frost said.
Justice Jackson made a related point in her concurring opinion, joined in part by Justice Sotomayor, pushing back on Justice Thomas’ characterization of the 14th Amendment as a narrow grant of citizenship to formerly enslaved people rather than a universal guarantee of naturalization.
“Even though I’m supportive of Trump, I’m glad our country is running exactly how it was designed to – people push the boundaries, and then we decide whether things need to change or stay the same,” said Tara Miller, a conservative from River Falls, Wisconsin, present at the Supreme Court for the decisions yesterday. “Some people are going to win, some are going to lose. That’s what this country is about.”
The stakes of the decision were not abstract: An amicus brief signed by 141 scholars estimated that ending birthright citizenship could prevent roughly 4.8 million U.S.-born children from becoming citizens by 2045, and as many as 12.8 million by 2075.
“The Executive Order ending birthright citizenship would not lessen immigration, but would create an underclass of undocumented U.S.-born children, causing great harm not just to those children and their families and communities, but to the American economy and the Nation as a whole,” the brief said.
“I’m grateful the court upheld the Constitution,” said Paulina Vargas. “If it hadn’t, it would have impacted the lives of so many children born in the United States. Now that won’t have to be a worry.”
For many immigrant families, the decision is a sigh of relief. Regardless, the administration has shown no sign of standing down on the broader immigration fight. The debate over who gets to be American – one the country has never fully resolved – is far from over.