Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship could upend 150 years of law

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In the roughly 150 years since its enactment, one could count the serious examinations of America’s birthright citizenship guarantee on one hand. But as of this month, you’d need another hand.

In one of his first acts upon reentering the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending universal birthright citizenship. Within hours, several lawsuits followed, claiming that the order is unconstitutional. The order effectively bars the United States from granting citizenship documents to children of parents in the country unlawfully or temporarily, born 30 days after the Jan. 20 order.

How the five lawsuits, including two from 23 state attorneys general, that are challenging the order will be resolved is unclear. And while the U.S. Supreme Court will likely have the final say, courts are being asked to review a constitutional provision that has faced little legal scrutiny since its writing.

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The 14th Amendment seems clear on birthright citizenship, but the Trump administration says its executive order ending this right is constitutional. Rulings on the matter will have implications beyond revoking citizenship from children of noncitizens.

“In the past few years, there’s been a lot of talk about repealing birthright citizenship. [But it’s] never come close to the Supreme Court,” says Sandra Rierson, a professor at Western State College of Law in Irvine, California. “That’s why we have this lack of precedent.”

The early legal jousts over the executive order could also be a prelude to other efforts, in Congress or via a constitutional amendment, to reform birthright citizenship.

President Donald Trump signs an executive order that aims to end birthright citizenship, from his desk in the White House Oval Office in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.

Misinterpreted, or “blatantly unconstitutional”?

The first sentence of the 14th Amendment states, in part: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Enacted after the Civil War as a renunciation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that Black people are not citizens of the U.S., the birthright citizenship clause has been relatively uncontested since 1868. But while writing that the provision “rightly repudiated” the Dred Scott decision, Mr. Trump wrote in the executive order that the clause “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”

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