Trump v. Barbara Re. Certiorari Granted December 5, 2025
On December 5, 2025, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Trump v. Barbara. The case questions whether Executive Order No. 14160, issued by President Donald Trump on January 20, 2025, complies with the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment and 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a), which codifies that clause.
The Court’s decision to grant certiorari in Barbara follows its 6–3 ruling earlier this year in the consolidated cases of Trump v. CASA, Trump v. Washington, and Trump v. New Jersey, in which it granted the government’s emergency application for partial stay and narrowed the availability of universal, or nationwide, injunctions, but declined to decide whether the birthright citizenship executive order itself is constitutional.
At the core of the dispute is the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s command that “[a]ll 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.” President Trump’s executive order, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” seeks to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S. whose parents are either unlawfully present in the country or on temporary visas.
In the lower courts, a New Hampshire federal district court judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the order against a class of babies born on or after February 20, 2025, who would be denied citizenship by Trump’s executive order of a month before. Meanwhile, in Trump v. Washington, the Ninth Circuit held that the executive order “contradicted the plain language” of the Citizenship Clause.
Adopted in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment and its Citizenship Clause were designed to repudiate the Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had denied citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their descendants. Three decades later, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Court held that a man born in California to Chinese parents was a U.S. citizen by virtue of his birth on U.S. soil, even though his parents were barred from naturalization. The Supreme Court’s modern understanding of the Citizenship Clause—near universal birthright citizenship regardless of the parents’ immigration status—traces primarily back to this case.
The Trump administration argues that Wong Kim Ark does not control the present controversy because the parents in that case were permanent residents. In its petition for review, the government argues that the Citizenship Clause was intended to secure citizenship for formerly enslaved people and their children, but not for “children of aliens temporarily visiting the United States or of illegal aliens.” It argues that such individuals are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. As such, the government presents that the executive order does not violate the Constitution, and merely seeks to restore the original meaning of the Citizenship Clause.
Challengers, meanwhile, argue that the executive order is unlawful not just as a constitutional issue but as a statutory one. Because an executive order cannot override a federal statute, and since Congress has independently codified birthright citizenship in federal statute (8 U.S.C. § 1401(a)), challengers argue that the order is invalid independent of its constitutionality. Moreover, in their brief in opposition to the government’s petition for certiorari, they assert that the constitutional question has already been answered in Wong Kim Ark, and that the petitioners fail to present any compelling argument as to why it should be overturned.
This case, unlike many immigration disputes, asks whether a foundational constitutional clause can be narrowed by executive order. A ruling for the Trump administration would mark the first time since Reconstruction that the Court meaningfully narrowed the scope of the Citizenship Clause, as well as deny citizenship to hundreds of thousands of babies born since February 20th of this year. A ruling for the challengers would reinforce the idea that birthright citizenship is a constitutional mandate that is beyond presidential control.
Although the case reached the Court through the regular certiorari process rather than the emergency docket, the Court’s decision to grant certiorari before any ruling by a lower court of appeals indicates the exceptional importance of the questions presented in this case. According to Supreme Court Rule 11, the Court grants certiorari before judgement only when a “case is of such public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice and to require immediate determination in this Court,” a high standard that is rarely met. Oral arguments are expected in the spring of 2026, with a decision by early summer. However the Court rules, Trump v. Barbara will be integral not only for immigration law, but defining the limits of presidential executive order authority in relation to the Constitution.