SCOTUS Agrees to Consider Merits of Birthright Citizenship Case

On December 5, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of one of President Donald Trump’s most contentious initiatives—an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship. The Court is expected to hear oral arguments inBarbara v. Trumpthis spring.

Facts of the Case

On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 14160, entitled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” The order directed federal agencies not to issue or recognize citizenship for certain children born in the U.S. if their parents were undocumented or only temporarily present in the country. 

The Executive Order specifically proclaimed that birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to children born in the United States when: (1) their mother was unlawfully present in the country and their father was neither a U.S. citizen nor a permanent resident at the time of the child’s birth; or (2) when their mother was lawfully, but temporarily, present in the United States and their father was neither a U.S. citizen nor a permanent resident. The Trump Administration argued this interpretation restored an “original meaning” of the Citizenship Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment: “All person 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.” The Fourteenth Amendment repudiated Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), which infamously misinterpreted the Constitution to deny U.S. citizenship to people of African descent based solely on their race. Congress has reaffirmed the Citizenship Clause in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

The U.S. Supreme Court also affirmed the existence of birthright citizenship in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898). Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873. His parents, who were of Chinese descent, were residents of California at the time of his birth. In ruling that Wong was a citizen, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children born here of resident aliens.”

As Justice Horace Gray explained, “To hold that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution excludes from citizenship the children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of other countries, would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage, who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.”

Citing this precedent, President Trump’s Executive Order was quickly met with legal challenges. In Barbara v. Trump, civil-rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit challenging the Executive Order, alleging that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment, federal citizenship statute, and other laws. District Judge Joseph N. Laplante issued a preliminary injunction that barred the Trump administration from enforcing the executive order against a class of babies born on or after February 20, 2025, who are or would be denied U.S. citizenship by Trump’s order.

Issues Before the Supreme Court

The Trump Administration appealed. In its petition for review, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause was “adopted to confer citizenship on the newly freed slaves and their children, not on the children of aliens temporarily visiting the United States or of illegal aliens.”

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari. The justices have agreed to consider the following question: “Whether Executive Order No. 14,160 complies on its face with the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment and with 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a), which codifies that clause.”

A date has not yet been set for oral arguments. A decision is expected by the end of the term in June/July 2026.