Birthright Citizenship Challenged By the Trump Administration

According to the Fourteenth Amendment, “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” This has been interpreted to mean that whoever is born in the U.S. is automatically presumed to be a citizen, with only very few exceptions (for the children of foreign diplomats, for example). Regardless of their parents’ immigration status or nationality, the vast majority of individuals born in the U.S. are guaranteed citizenship.

On January 20, 2025, though, Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” The EO claims that the Fourteenth Amendment excludes certain “persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” aiming to prohibit the authorization of citizenship to people in two different circumstances:

1. When that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.
2. When that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 202,3 mothers who were unauthorized immigrants or had temporary legal status in the U.S. had about 320,000 babies, representing about 9% of all 3.6 million babies born in the U.S. that year. If Trump’s executive order had already gone into effect during that time, about 260,000 of those babies would not have qualified for citizenship.

Essentially, the Trump Administration argues that a person should only be granted citizenship based on their parents legal status, raising the question of: Is a person “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States if they were born in the United States to a mother who was unlawfully present or temporarily present and whose father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, or vice versa?

That is the question raised by Trump v Barbara, a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1, 2026.  The Supreme Court has answered that question affirmatively in the past.  Will the Supreme Court follow that precedent this time around?

The Lawsuit: Trump v. Barbara

Trump v. Barbara is a Supreme Court Case challenging the Executive Order issued by President Trump, claiming it is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. The lawsuit, led by the ACLU, is filed on behalf of “Barbara,” a pseudonym for a Honduran asylum seeker representing a class of families affected by the executive order.

Although the public does not know the exact identity of “Barbara,” she is a woman who has been living in New Hampshire with her husband and three children. Her family fled Honduras due to the increasing gang violence. The executive order would deny birthright citizenship to her child born after the Executive Order. Many other families are in the same situation.  Denying birthright citizenship would change the face of our country and its population, creating an underclass of children who do not possess the same rights, and depending on the laws of their parents’ countries of origin, may be stateless entirely.

Legal scholars and commentators think that Trump is likely to lose this case as the majority of Supreme Court Justices seemed skeptical of this interpretation.  The government’s argument in favor of the Executive Order largely cited obscure publications and snippets of records from the time of the debate around the Fourteenth Amendment.  The ACLU’s arguments were rooted in longstanding legal precedent, the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act, which contains similar language to the Fourteenth Amendment. However, we all await the final decision of the Court, which is not expected until late June or July 2026.