Overview
- President Trump, in a Monday Truth Social post ahead of the hearing, attacked the judiciary as “dumb” and claimed birthright citizenship was meant for “babies of slaves.”
- Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025 order would deny automatic citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented parents or parents on temporary visas after Feb. 19, 2025, but lower courts have blocked it nationwide.
- The case turns on how to read “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the Fourteenth Amendment, with the administration urging a narrow view and opponents citing the 1898 Wong Kim Ark ruling that affirmed near‑universal citizenship by birth.
- The stakes are large, with researchers estimating 150,000 to more than 250,000 newborns each year could lose automatic citizenship, raising risks of statelessness and upending routine steps like hospital birth registration and Social Security issuance.
- Critics say government briefs lean on 19th‑century, racially charged authorities such as Alexander Porter Morse and Francis Wharton, while some scholars on the right float a limited “sojourner” exception that would exclude children of short‑term visitors.