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Supreme Court to weigh Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship under 14th Amendment
Natalie Ogami, Cronkite News
March 30, 2026
Cronkite News offers an audio version of this story using an automated voice created by AI. Errors in pronunciation, pacing and intonation may occur. If you notice an error please contact cronkitenews@asu.edu.WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court is poised to hear oral arguments in a case that could upend birthright citizenship in the United States.
Up to a quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year would be denied citizenship under the executive order President Donald Trump issued the day he returned to office – about 7% of all births nationwide in 2024.
The nation’s high court ruled in 1898 that anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen. Trump’s order would end automatic citizenship, withholding that right from babies without at least one parent who is a citizen or permanent legal resident.
In Arizona, that would have excluded about 3,400 babies born in 2022, according to the state’s initial legal challenge, filed in January 2025.
Oral arguments Wednesday will be closely watched by immigrant advocates, families who might be impacted and, on the other side, by Trump allies eager to tighten access to U.S. citizenship.
Arizona was one of 22 states that challenged Trump’s order the day after he issued it.
“No executive order can supersede the United States Constitution and over 150 years of settled law,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said at the time.
Federal judges in three states issued nationwide injunctions to block implementation. In June, the Supreme Court overturned those orders, ruling 6-3 that trial courts lack the authority to impose so-called universal injunctions.
But the court left open the option of class action lawsuits that could have the same effect. The ACLU filed such a lawsuit on behalf of “all children born on U.S. soil to parents who are undocumented or have temporary status.” A court issued a new nationwide injunction that has kept Trump’s order on hold.
The Trump administration argues that the executive order “restores the original meaning” of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which ensured citizenship for former slaves after the Civil War.
The clause says that “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.”
In 1898, the Supreme Court affirmed that the clause covered children born in the U.S. to immigrants. That case involved a man named Wong Kim Ark whose parents had immigrated from China.
The ruling “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 here born of resident aliens,” Justice Horace Gray wrote for the 6-2 majority.
The legal consensus is on the side of the longstanding interpretation of birthright citizenship.
Trump’s effort is “a brazen attempt by the President to assert power that the Constitution denies him,” the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, a conservative legal group, argued in a brief filed on behalf of 28 Republicans – including one of Trump’s former White House lawyers, Ty Cobb, plus former Justice Department officials, judges and members of Congress.
José Patiño, vice president of education and external affairs for the Arizona-based advocacy group Aliento, noted that Trump’s order would target children whose parents are present lawfully but temporarily, including DACA recipients, asylum seekers, H-1B workers, students and tourists.
“The administration argues that undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders cannot demonstrate allegiance to the country, as they cannot vote. No lower court has accepted that argument,” he said.
Some conservatives and advocates for restricting immigration have sought for decades to reverse the traditional interpretation.
In 2011, Republicans in the Arizona Legislature tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill that would revoke birthright citizenship for children born to parents who were not permanent residents of the state.
Advocates used much the same argument being offered now by the Justice Department: that children born to parents who are in the country temporarily or without legal status aren’t fully “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
The phrase has always excluded the children of foreign diplomats, for instance. Congress and the courts resolved questions more than a century ago about whether Native Americans – as members of sovereign tribal nations – held U.S. citizenship.
Patiño said Trump’s attempt to restrict access to birthright citizenship would create a humanitarian crisis.
“The consequences would not be limited to Arizona. … Hospitals, schools, Social Security offices and passport agencies were never designed to operate under a two-tiered citizenship system. The children caught in the middle, born and raised here, American in every sense, would be left legally invisible in the only country they have ever known,” he said.
The CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Juan Proaño, called Trump’s actions “cruel and unprecedented.”
In the Trump administration’s brief ahead of oral arguments, D. John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general, argues that children born to noncitizen parents “are not completely subject to the United States’ political jurisdiction.”
The American Bar Association, among many other groups that have weighed in with friend of the court briefs, disputes that. The ABA called the clause “a clear, simple, easily administered rule on which the legal system has relied for more than a century.”
“If any ambiguity exists in the Birthright Citizenship Clause, which is doubtful, it is resolved by looking at this Nation’s consistent understanding of the constitutional provision,” the ABA wrote in its amicus brief. “Disregarding this national consensus and upholding the Executive Order would sow chaos throughout the legal system.”
The Migration Policy Institute projects that over the next 50 years, 255,000 babies on average will be born annually in the U.S. who would be excluded from citizenship under Trump’s rule. The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports restrictions on immigration, put the estimate for 2023 at 225,000 to 250,000.
While some children could obtain citizenship from their parents’ home country, some would be left entirely stateless.
“These children would face a life of legal limbo: unable to access passports, federal benefits, or the full rights of American life, in the only country they have ever known,” Patiño said by email.
Such individuals could be barred from access to public education or health care, and could face immediate deportation.
Trump and others have warned against so-called “anchor babies,” whose citizenship makes it easier for relatives to come to the U.S., or even “terror babies” – infants with the right to live in the U.S., raised by parents whose allegiance is to an enemy nation.
“We don’t need a constitutional amendment to stop this craziness,” Trump said at an Iowa campaign event in January 2016.
Some congressional Republicans echo the sentiment.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, joined 17 other Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee in a brief backing Trump’s order. They argue the 14th Amendment has been used improperly.
“Incorrect implementation has created a warped incentive for pregnant foreign nationals to enter the United States for the sole purpose of giving birth here and conferring citizenship to their children,” he said.
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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