SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 12/5/2025
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments early next year in the challenge to President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States. Under the order, which has never gone into effect, people born in the United States would not be automatically entitled to citizenship if their parents are in this country either illegally or temporarily. The challengers argue that the order conflicts with both the text of the Constitution and the court’s longstanding case law.
The announcement came in a brief list of orders from the justices’ private conference on Friday morning. The court will release another list of orders, including the cases from Friday’s conference in which it has denied review, on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EST.
The United States is one of roughly 30 countries, including Canada and Mexico, that offer automatic citizenship to nearly everyone born there. Birthright citizenship was added to the Constitution in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was adopted following the Civil War. The section of that amendment known as the citizenship clause provides that “[a]ll 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.” The amendment was intended to overrule one of the Supreme Court’s most notorious decisions, its 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to the United States and enslaved was not entitled to any protection from the federal courts because he was not a U.S. citizen.
In a related case in 1898, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in California to parents of Chinese descent. By a vote of 6-2, the court rejected the government’s argument that Wong Kim Ark was not a U.S. citizen, with Justice Horace Gray explaining that the 14th Amendment – although enacted to establish the citizenship of Black people – “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens.”
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/12/supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-trumps-challenge-to-birthright-citizenship/
