For more than 150 years, the U.S. Constitution has promised that anyone born on American soil is a citizen. That promise originates from the Fourteenth Amendment, and both federal law and previous Supreme Court rulings have continually reinforced it. Now, that long-standing tradition is up against a serious obstacle. On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship. A federal district court blocked the move almost immediately, but the administration appealed. The Supreme Court has now agreed to hear the case, raising the possibility that a right many Americans assumed was settled might be rewritten.
The Fourteenth Amendment says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” For centuries, legal scholars have generally agreed that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” applies to absolutely everyone born here. As early as 1829, the constitutional scholar William Rawle wrote that “every person born within the United States…whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural-born citizen in the sense of the Constitution.” Trump’s executive order rejects that long-accepted interpretation by arguing that children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants are not truly under U.S. jurisdiction. If the courts come to accept that view, current and future generations of children would not automatically obtain citizenship and could even be deported despite being born in the country.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), expecting a fight over the order, filed a lawsuit almost immediately, along with several other plaintiffs. On July 10, 2025, federal district court judge Joseph Laplante in Concord, New Hampshire, issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the government from enforcing Trump’s order. He also certified the case as a class action, which meant the judge’s ruling protected all children who might be affected, not just the individuals who first brought the lawsuit.
The Supreme Court’s decision to take the case now sets up one of the most significant citizenship debates the country has seen since the Reconstruction Era. If the justices uphold the executive order, the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment could shift for the first time in more than a century and a half, with grave consequences for immigrant families across the country. If the order is struck down, the principle of birthright citizenship will remain in place. The Court is expected to hear arguments later this term, leaving the nation and many families whose future depends on the outcome, waiting for an answer to a question that has shaped American identity for generations.