Birthright citizenship reaches US Supreme Court in a case that will define the country’s future

The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to write one of the most important chapters in the country’s future. The nine justices of the court, where there is a conservative majority (six to three), are scheduled on Wednesday to hear arguments from both sides on the issue of birthright citizenship, which affects the very essence of the nation and could redefine who is considered a U.S. citizen.

The case seeks to determine whether the executive order issued by President Donald Trump on the first day of his second term in office, limiting birthright citizenship, is constitutional. According to the order, babies born in the United States would not automatically acquire citizenship if their parents are in the country without legal documentation or only temporarily. To achieve this, the White House is reinterpreting the Fourteenth Amendment, which states 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.”

The president told reporters that he plans to attend Wednesday’s hearing. If he does show up, it will be the first time in history that a president has attended the proceedings, an act viewed as putting unprecedented pressure on the justices.

“Ending birthright citizenship would upend the law and the lives of hundreds of thousands of families, by denying citizenship to people in the only country they’ve ever called home — people who would be left in a permanent subclass of U.S.-born children who are denied their rights as Americans,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement.

For more than a century, all babies born in the country, except those born to “foreign diplomats” or “foreign invading forces,” have been considered U.S. citizens. This was standard practice and generally accepted by the courts. But Trump’s order, which seeks to solidify one of the main pillars of his immigration policy, calls into question the citizenship of 1.2 million children and alters the very nature of a country built by immigrants.

The order, however, never went into effect because several federal courts challenged it the day after it was signed, and several judges issued rulings prohibiting its implementation nationwide. But the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court.

In June 2025, the court ruled in favor of the White House, but left open the possibility of using other means to block the policy, such as class-action lawsuits. This is precisely what the ACLU did immediately. Because of that lawsuit, Trump’s order has still not been implemented.

A federal court ruled in favor of the ACLU, and in fact, all the lower courts that have heard this legal debate have ruled that Trump’s order is illegal, but the White House appealed the case to the Supreme Court. The justices of the high court decided to consolidate all the cases in the hearing they will hold this Wednesday under the title “Trump v. Barbara.”

In this specific case, a federal judge in New Hampshire prohibited the Trump Administration from enforcing the order against children born on or after February 20, 2025, the date on which the order was to take effect.

The key: “Subject to jurisdiction”

The justices are not expected to reach an immediate decision after hearing oral arguments from the lawyers representing the plaintiffs and from Solicitor General John Sauer, who is defending Trump’s position. Experts predict the Supreme Court’s final decision will be announced in a few months, around summer.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement that the Supreme Court has an opportunity to restore the original meaning of citizenship in the United States and that this case will have enormous consequences for the security of all Americans.

The plaintiffs argue that the order conflicts with both established Supreme Court case law and the 14th Amendment.

The purpose of this amendment, which is almost 160 years old, was to overturn the controversial Supreme Court decision in a case involving Dred Scott, an African American activist. The high court ruled in 1857 that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to America and sold into slavery was not entitled to any protection from federal courts because they were not a U.S. citizen. The 14th Amendment corrected that injustice.

The plaintiffs also point out that many of the arguments put forward by the Trump administration are inspired by white supremacist or racist thinkers. The administration maintains that the Citizenship Clause, which was added to the Constitution after the Civil War, was simply intended to guarantee that formerly enslaved people and their children would be U.S. citizens rather than the children of aliens temporarily in the United States or undocumented immigrants, as Attorney General Sauer argued in his written brief to the Supreme Court.

The president, who plans to attend the Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday, insists he wants to put a stop to “birth tourism,” referring to foreigners who travel to the United States just to have their babies obtain U.S. citizenship, a minority practice.

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