Trump v. Barbara: Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship in 6-3 decision
On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court held in a 6-3 decision for Trump v. Barbara that, under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, children born to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the US are US citizens by birth. The Court’s ruling struck down President Trump’s January 2025 Executive Order that attempted to block birthright citizenship for the children of certain noncitizen parents. Read the opinion here, or see below for our firm’s summary of the opinion’s key points.
In a majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court explains that US citizenship originated from the English common law principle of jus soli, that any child “born within the dominions” [on English soil] was a subject of the King and therefore a “natural-born subject.” Trump v. Barbara, 609 U.S. _____, 3 (2026). Roberts states that “This view crossed the Atlantic with the colonists—and was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution, as ‘subject[s]’ of the sovereign became ‘citizens’ of the States.” Id. at 4. The US continued to turn to the English common law principle of jus soli to determine whether the children of Native Americans and immigrants were US citizens, and it was the Southern slave states that changed their reasoning of how to determine citizenship so that they could deny birthright citizenship to enslaved Black Americans. See id. at 6. The Supreme Court adopted the southern States’ reasoning in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856) by ruling that a Black American’s lack of citizenship was due to the enslaved status of at least one parent. Id. at 7.
Roberts then explains that after the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Congress and United States sought to formally overturn the birthright citizenship holding in Dred Scott first by enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then by ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 7-9. Roberts quotes extensive, well-documented evidence that the Reconstruction Congress knew that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment would confer birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants, and it did not make any difference in how they proceeded with the Act or Amendment. See id. Roberts also points out that even the language of the Fourteenth Amendment mirrored the language of English common law, further proving that the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment never made any change in the way they thought of birthright citizenship. Id. These are key findings, as the Supreme Court and Constitutional Law scholars frequently look to legislative intent to determine what a law or amendment means.
The majority opinion and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s concurring opinion both soundly rebut the fringe arguments attempted in the dissenting opinions. “Domicile” was a key issue debated during this case’s oral arguments, and Roberts dismisses its application to the Fourteenth Amendment. He explains that the “domicile” discussion presented in the previous leading case on birthright citizenship (United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)) originated from post-Fourteenth Amendment scholars’ “international law” theory, where a child’s citizenship is tied to their parents’ citizenship. Id. at 14. In other words, “domicile” in relation to the international theory of citizenship could not have been something that the Reconstruction Congress or United States intended to use to determine citizenship because it had not yet been invented. Roberts also rejects the Trump Administration’s assertion that the United States’s concept of allegiance (and therefore citizenship) at some point broke from English common law; Roberts points out that there is “scant evidence” in the record showing this break, and writes that “the Government and the dissent identify no source that defined allegiance at birth as being based on domicile in the period from 1776 to 1866.” Id. At 18.
Also of particular note is Justice Jackson’s concurrence addressing Justice Thomas’s dissenting opinion, which makes a race-based distinction between who the Reconstruction Congress intended to confer citizenship to. Jackson writes:
“Despite his longstanding endorsement of a ‘colorblind’ Constitution, Justice Thomas now surprisingly suggests that the Citizenship Clause was a race-conscious remedial measure, relating only to ‘freed slaves such as Dred Scott’ . . . but that narrow vision of the Fourteenth Amendment bears little relationship to the history of its ratification. Even worse, Justice Thomas’s telling elides the entire point of the Second Founding: The Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery.”
Trump v. Barbara, 609 U.S. _____, 1-2 (2026) [Justice Jackson, concurring]. Jackson then highlights and recognizes Black Americans' key influence and efforts in abolishing slavery and ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment:
“Freed Blacks did not advocate for a unique set of rules that catered only to their situation. Nor did they seek to advance their own position relative to, or at the expense and exclusion of, other marginalized groups. Instead, those whose gatherings helped galvanize the push for full equality understood that ‘a diverse origin does not disprove a common nature, nor does it disprove a united destiny.’”
Id. at 10. To conclude her opinion, Jackson states in one of the last paragraphs that
“this alternative account [the dissenting opinion] pitches Black Americans against immigrants when the advocates who promoted the Fourteenth Amendment did no such thing. Freed Blacks fought for the shared humanity of all people. And the Great Emancipator eventually foresaw that the only path forward that could prevent a return—in any form—to slavery and race-based subordination was to link the fates of all.”
Id. at 19.