In the last weeks of June, when the justices are still deliberating over their most important decisions of the term, a certain silence descends upon the marble steps of the Supreme Court building. That silence feels heavier than usual this year. Behind those doors is a decision that affects a question that most Americans never consider: does being born in the United States automatically grant citizenship?
The answer has been a straightforward “yes” for over a century. The Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 following the Civil War, states that everyone born in the United States and subject to its laws is a citizen, regardless of parentage, wealth, or ancestry. In 1898, the Supreme Court further resolved the issue by declaring that children born here to immigrant parents are citizens from birth. It’s the kind of legal cornerstone that, because it has been in place for so long, people forget about.
We are now testing that bedrock. President Trump has advocated for a reinterpretation of the amendment that would deny automatic citizenship to children born to parents who are either temporary residents or have no legal status. He was reportedly the first sitting president to personally attend the oral arguments in April, which speaks volumes about his personal stake in the result. Since then, he has kept posting about it, claiming that the nation “cannot live with the shackles” of the current system. It is currently primarily up to nine people in robes to decide whether that framing is consistent with 160 years of precedent.
The administration is likely to lose this one, according to legal experts. Even some conservative justices expressed skepticism during oral arguments, and eliminating birthright citizenship through executive action would essentially mean disregarding the amendment’s plain language—something courts have traditionally been hesitant to do in the absence of a constitutional amendment. Only seventeen times since the Bill of Rights have two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states agreed to amend the Constitution.
What’s truly at risk for actual families is what’s easy to lose in the legal back and forth. Currently, millions of children born in the United States have at least one immigrant parent. Some of those children might find themselves in an odd legal limbo—born, raised, and educated here, but not fully acknowledged as citizens of anywhere—if the rule were to change even a little. For a child in a Houston elementary school or a family in rural Ohio, it is difficult to ignore how quickly an abstract legal theory becomes a very concrete issue.
Additionally, there is a more general pattern that is worth considering. The majority of the approximately three dozen nations that still offer unconditional automatic birthright citizenship are in the Western Hemisphere, including the United States. Not only would ending the practice change domestic policy, but it would place the nation in a more constrained and smaller club than it has been in since Reconstruction. That suggests the stakes extend beyond this specific administration, but it’s not necessarily a knockdown argument either way.
Before its term ends, the court still has about twenty cases to decide. Many of these cases involve issues of executive power during the Trump administration, ranging from border asylum policies to Federal Reserve firings. Because it affects identity in a way that tariffs or agency staffing never quite do, birthright citizenship is one of the most significant. Any day now, a ruling is anticipated, and no matter how it turns out, it will probably become one of those rulings that people refer to for decades, much like they still do with Wong Kim Ark.
As we watch this unfold from the outside, it seems to be true that the nation is awaiting an answer to a question it believed to be closed. That in and of itself provides some insight into the current situation.
