Supreme Court to Hear Birthright Citizenship Case

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on April 1 in Trump v. Barbara, a case challenging President Donald Trump's executive order that seeks to restrict birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants or parents holding temporary visas. The order, signed on January 20, 2025, the president's first day of his second term, would deny automatic citizenship to such children born after February 19, 2025, by reinterpreting the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause.

The provision in question 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." Ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, the amendment aimed to grant citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their descendants, overturning the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, which had denied citizenship to Black Americans. For over 150 years, the clause has been interpreted to provide automatic citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents' status, with narrow exceptions for children of foreign diplomats or...