The Case That Could Upend Who Gets to Be an American Is Back at the Supreme Court

The Trump administration's executive order denying birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and non-green card holders returns to the Supreme Court next week in Trump v. Barbara, with oral arguments scheduled for April 1. The administration claims the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause—ratified in 1868 to overturn the Dred Scott decision—was intended only to protect descendants of former slaves, not children of undocumented immigrants, though constitutional scholars and historians overwhelmingly reject this reading. Lower courts have already struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, finding it contradicts the amendment's plain text and a century of precedent dating to Wong Kim Ark, which upheld birthright citizenship for children of Chinese immigrants despite anti-Chinese sentiment. The Supreme Court will now decide whether the 14th Amendment's guarantee that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens" applies to the children in question. The case marks a significant challenge to what has been settled constitutional law since the 19th century.