Trump, et. al. v. Barbara, et. al., 609 U.S. _____ (2026).
In a long-awaited opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s Executive Order 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which he signed on January 20, 2025. The issue before the U.S. Supreme Court was “whether the Constitution guarantees citizenship to children born in the United States of parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the country.”
Facts
President Trump signed Executive Order 14160 (Order) on Inauguration Day. The Order specified that, under the Fourteenth Amendment and 8 U.S.C. § 1401 (Nationals and citizens of the United States at birth), birthright citizenship is limited to those "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. Consequently, it denied automatic citizenship to individuals born to a temporarily or unlawfully present mother and a father who is neither a U.S. citizen nor a permanent resident.
Numerous suits were filed by parents—some with immigrant status, some on behalf of their children, and some through immigrant rights organizations. They argued that the Order violated the Citizenship Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment and the Immigration Nationality Act (INA). The U.S. District Court for New Hampshire ruled that the Order violated the Constitution by denying birthright citizenship. See Barbara v. Trump, 790 F. Supp. 3d 90 (NH 2025). The district court certified a nationwide class of children who would be denied citizenship under the Order. The U.S. government appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment with the U.S. Supreme Court on September 26, 2025. The Supreme Court granted the petition on December 5, 2025.
Analysis
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the court.
The opinion extensively reviewed the historical timeline and legal record of U.S. citizenship. Under English common law, which the American colonists brought to the mainland, they were subjects of the British Crown (the sovereign). Children born to subjects of the sovereign were also subjects of the British Crown, labeled “natural-born subjects.” However, ambassadors and their families, even though on British soil, still owed allegiance to their home country and thus were excluded. Thus, they were not subjects of the sovereign, nor were their children. But a foreign mother, under then-British common law, could enter Britain, give birth, and her child would be a British subject who owed allegiance to the sovereign. The American colonists adopted the concept of jus soli, or the right of the soil. Exceptions existed, such as the common law in England, which recognized ambassadors and their families as owing allegiance to their home country and not considered British subjects.
After the American Revolution, former British subjects became citizens of their respective states. The Indian Tribes were considered to be dependent nations that maintained their own territorial dominions. Thus, when their children were born, they were considered to be citizens of their tribe, not of the United States.
The common law “made no distinction on account of race or color.” United States v. Rhodes, 27 F. Cas. 785, 789 (No. 16, 151) (CC Ky. 1866). However, many Southern states, rejecting common law, denied citizenship to Black Americans. Subsequently, the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, rejecting common law, found that “the words ‘people of the United States’ and ‘citizen[s]’” in the U.S. Constitution excluded slaves.
After the Civil War, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, declaring that “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby… citizens of the United States.” The intent of Congress was to codify the common law. Next came the Fourteenth Amendment. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is akin to the common law; it reads: “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.”
The Court noted that “jurisdiction” at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted referred, as now, to the power and authority of the government within its geographical territories. The Citizenship Clause uses the term jurisdiction in this way in the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” “The ordinary legal meaning of the text of the Clause thus neatly captures the common law rule.” In other words, “the same groups included (and excluded) by jus soli were included (and excluded) by the conventional understanding of jurisdiction. Excluded by both were the children of foreign ministers and members of the 19th-century Indian tribes over whom the United States had ceded a part of its territorial jurisdiction to preserve its relationship with a foreign sovereign.”
The Court ruled “no such intersovereign concerns apply to children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States. . . those children are thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. . . They satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause: they are ‘born. . . in the United States’ and ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ Under the Constitution, they are citizens at birth.”
The Court emphasized that this ruling aligns with United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), which held that the “Citizenship Clause incorporated the common law and granted citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States.”
Finally, the Court distinguished the Order from the Citizenship Clause, noting that terms in the Order, such as “mother,” “father,” “lawful,” and “temporary,” are not mentioned in the Citizenship Clause because the Court said, “it does not matter.” Citizenship depends on the government of the country in which one is physically present, regardless of one's parents’ status, unless an exception applies, i.e., diplomats.
In affirming the judgment of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, the Supreme Court declared: “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights–to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’”
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