By Edward Henderson, California Black Media
The Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship by executive order, reaffirming the longstanding constitutional principle that almost all children born in the United States are U.S. citizens.
In the executive order, Trump asserted that, “the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.” The order argues that children born in the United States to parents who are in the country unlawfully or temporarily are not automatically entitled to citizenship.
At the center of the dispute is the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, “All 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.”
Trump’s executive order argues that the amendment “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.” Under the order, children born in the United States to parents who are in the country unlawfully or temporarily would no longer automatically receive U.S. citizenship.
Supporters of the policy argue that ending birthright citizenship would reduce unauthorized immigration and eliminate what they describe as an incentive for people to travel to the United States to have children who automatically become citizens.
Opponents counter that the policy contradicts more than a century of constitutional precedent and would fundamentally redefine one of the nation’s strongest guarantees of equal citizenship. They also warn that restricting birthright citizenship could leave many U.S.-born children without a clear legal status, forcing Congress to create an entirely new system for determining citizenship, residency and eligibility for government services.
The debate traces back to the Fourteenth Amendment itself.
Congress adopted the amendment in 1866, and it was ratified in 1868 during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. Its primary purpose was to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford decision in 1857, which declared that Black Americans—whether enslaved or free—could never be citizens of the United States.
Lawmakers wrote the amendment to guarantee citizenship and equal protection under the law for formerly enslaved people and their descendants while preventing states from denying them fundamental constitutional rights.
Although the amendment is now considered a cornerstone of modern civil rights law, it faced fierce resistance when it was adopted. Many former Confederate states refused to ratify it and were required to do so before being readmitted to the Union.
Thirty years later, the Supreme Court reinforced the amendment’s meaning in the landmark 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who were barred from becoming U.S. citizens under the Chinese Exclusion Act. After traveling abroad, he was denied reentry into the United States because federal officials argued he was not a citizen. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that because he had been born on American soil, he was a U.S. citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment.
That decision established the constitutional precedent that birthright citizenship applies regardless of a parent’s nationality or immigration status—a ruling that has remained in place for more than 125 years.
California also has a little-known connection to the amendment’s history.
Although California voted to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, political infighting and procedural disputes later cast doubt on whether the state’s ratification was properly completed. The controversy reflected broader resistance among some California lawmakers during the 1860s to extending civil rights—including birthright citizenship and equal protection—to Chinese, Mexican and Native American residents.
To remove any uncertainty, the California Legislature voted unanimously in 1959—91 years after the amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution—to formally reaffirm and ratify the Fourteenth Amendment.
Responding to the Supreme Court’s decision handed down in the case Trump v Barbara on June 30, President Trump posted on Truth Social, “The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process. No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!”
However, changing the Constitution would be an extraordinarily difficult process. Under Article V, a constitutional amendment must first receive the support of two-thirds of both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate before being ratified by three-fourths of the states. No constitutional amendment has been repealed or substantially revised through that process in more than three decades.
