The Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court in September 2025, challenging the district court's injunction in
Barbara. The Supreme Court granted
certiorari before judgment in December 2025. The Trump administration has argued that the language of the 14th Amendment was only meant to apply to the newly emancipated slaves and their children, and not to those from other countries. They have cited statements of late-19th century writers Alexander Porter Morse,
Francis Wharton, and George D. Collins, all who proposed narrower interpretations of the 14th Amendment to limit who was eligible for birthright citizenship. The administration also referred to
Elk v. Wilkins, an 1884 Supreme Court case where the Court found that a
Native American, born on a
reservation, was not eligible for birthright citizenship since, at the time, reservations were sovereign from the federal government. The Court stated in the majority decision that Native American children were equivalent to "the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government". Birthright citizenship of Native Americans was later affirmed by the
Indian Citizenship Act in 1924. Eighteen
amici curiae were filed in support of Trump. Those writing in support of Trump included
New York University law professor
Richard Epstein, legal scholars
Hans von Spakovsky and
Ilan Wurman; Senators
Ted Cruz and
Eric Schmitt, Representatives
Claudia Tenney,
Chip Roy, and 27 other Republican members of Congress; Gun Owners of America,
Citizens United, and the Conservative Legal Defense & Education Fund; the Republican attorneys general of 25 U.S. states and Guam; and the
Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization founded by
white nationalist John Tanton in 1979 and classified by the
Southern Poverty Law Center as a
hate group. After the class respondents filed their brief on February 19, 2026, they were joined in condemnation of the order by briefs from 42
amici curiae across the legal profession, civil rights groups, and others. Organizations writing in response included
NAACP, the
League of Women Voters and the
National Urban League and more than 200 other immigrants' rights, legal defense, civil rights, veterans' rights nonprofits and organizations, 19 labor unions, hundreds of legal scholars and professors in conjunction with scholars on migration, sociology, economics and political science. Supporters also came from elected officials, including 217 Democratic members of Congress, more than 130 state and local governments and dozens of current and former judges, and over a dozen "former White House lawyers, senior government officials, federal judges, governors, and members of Congress who were appointed or nominated by Republican presidents, or who were elected as Republicans." The
Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank founded in 1977 by
Ed Crane, libertarian economist
Murray Rothbard, and industrialist and Republican donor
Charles Koch, also submitted a February brief in support of the respondents, countering the petitioners' claim that "children of alien parents who are domiciled elsewhere, and are only temporarily present in the United States, owe primary allegiance to their parents’ home country" with the Court's determination in
United States v. Wong Kim Ark that "the status of citizenship [is] to be fixed by the place of nativity, irrespective of parentage". The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also submitted a brief in support of Barbara and the class, citing more than a dozen papal encyclicals which, in addition to asserting the order was "unconstitutional and violative of
8 U.S.C. §1401(a)", also condemned it as "immoral and contrary to the Catholic Church’s fundamental beliefs and teachings regarding the life and dignity of human persons", and invoked the Catholic doctrine of
subsidiarity: Implicit in the notion of subsidiarity is social participation rooted in human dignity. Every member of a civil community, “either as an individual or in association with others, whether directly or through representation, contributes to the cultural, economic, political and social life of the civil community to which he belongs.” Through this lens, social participation is not a discretionary benefit conferred by the state, but a fundamental right inherent in the very fact of being human... Birthright citizenship is consonant with this view. By recognizing citizenship at the place of someone’s birth, the state justly acknowledges that a child is already embedded in a community—family, neighborhood, parish, and school—and empowers the child to participate in that community. Oral arguments took place on April 1, 2026. Trump attended the oral arguments, a first for any sitting president in the official records. U.S. solicitor general
D. John Sauer represented the government's case, while
Cecillia Wang of the ACLU represented the respondents. Some of the debate focused on the use of "domicile" in the
Wong Kim Ark case, with Sauer arguing that this would require the parents to have some permanent residence to qualify, while several justices questioned how significant the word was to that case, as residence was never a factor in debates during drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment. Sauer also expressed concern about birthright tourism, immigrants coming to the U.S. to have their children and grant them U.S. citizenship, expressing the need as part of the "new world", to which chief justice
John Roberts said ″Well, it's a new world. It's the same Constitution."
The New York Times stated that the questioning led to two possible paths for the Supreme Court to rule against the administration: to uphold the findings in
Wong Kim Ark, or to turn to the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which codified birthright citizenship. Ruling on the latter, statutory route, would allow the government to seek new laws to replace the 1952 one, Sauer said. == References ==