[Tomorrow at 10 am, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Trump's Executive Order denying birthright citizenship to children of foreign visitors born on American soil. For example, the children of foreign diplomats are not American citizens if they are born here during their parents term of service.]

The key arguments in the birthright citizenship case

Mar 27 2026

On April 1, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in one of the highest-profile cases of the 2025-26 term – and indeed, one of the biggest cases in several years. Trump v. Barbara is a challenge to President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. All of the lower courts that have weighed in so far have ruled that the order is unconstitutional, but the Trump administration contends that those rulings – as well as the longstanding view that virtually everyone born in the United States is entitled to U.S. citizenship – are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Constitution. The challengers counter that the Trump administration “is asking for nothing less than a remaking of our Nation’s constitutional foundations” – one that “would cast a shadow over the citizenship of millions upon millions of Americans, going back generations.”

The constitutional provision at the center of the case, known as the citizenship clause, is part of the 14th Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in 1868. The clause confers citizenship on anyone “born … in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” It was intended to overrule the Supreme Court’s notorious 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as enslaved persons was not entitled to any protection from the federal courts because he was not a U.S. citizen.

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In its brief on the merits, the Trump administration insists that the executive order simply “restores the original meaning” of the citizenship clause. That clause, writes U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, was enacted to overrule Dred Scott and give citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their children, rather than to “the children of aliens who are temporarily present in the United States or … illegal aliens.” In the years that followed the adoption of the 14th Amendment, Sauer said, the court twice acknowledged the limited purpose of the citizenship clause. First, in the Slaughter-House Cases in 1873, the court “recognized that the Amendment’s ‘one pervading purpose’ was ‘the freedom of the slave race’ and ‘the security and firm establishment of that freedom.’” And just over a decade after that, the court in Elk v. Wilkins indicated that the clause’s primary purpose “was to settle ‘the citizenship of free[d] [slaves].’”

The Trump administration also contends that the executive order’s limitations on birthright citizenship are consistent with the rules used in early English and U.S. history, under which children were entitled to citizenship only if they were born within the allegiance of the government – that is, owing the government a duty of support and loyalty.

(and more…)

https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/03/the-key-arguments-in-the-birthright-citizenship-case/