On January 20th, 2025, a group of immigrants’ rights advocates filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order (EO) that interprets of Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship to children born in the United States. The lawsuit argues that the new executive orderseeks to enshrine a tiered system of personhood by denying citizenship to children born in the United States. This EO could render countless children stateless, stripping them of their most basic rights and protections.
The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of Maine, ACLU of Massachusetts, Asian Law Caucus, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and Legal Defense Fund represent organizations with members whose children born in the United States could be denied citizenship under the EO, including New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and Make the Road New York.
The lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration flouts the dictates of the Fourteenth Amendment, and longstanding Supreme Court precedent as affirmed in United States v. Kim Wong Ark (169 U.S. 649), by denying birthright citizenship to children born on American soil.
Birthright citizenship is the principle of jus soli, that all children born in the United States are U.S. citizens. Citizenship of all children born in the United States, regardless of race, color or ancestry, is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The 14th Amendment states that “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.”
The principle of birthright citizenship has remained a bedrock of our constitution for over a century. Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment overturned the infamous Dred Scott decision that denied Black people the rights and protections of U.S. citizenship. In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that children born in the U.S. to immigrant parents were entitled to U.S. citizenship in the case United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
Trump’s executive order puts families across the country in jeopardy. Expectant couples now fear what will happen to their newborns. One expectant couple impacted by this executive order are members of New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support. The couple arrived in the U.S. in 2023 applied for asylum, and are awaiting review of their application. The mother is currently in her third trimester. Under the executive order, their baby would be considered an undocumented noncitizen and could be denied access to critical early life nutrition and healthcare. Children denied birthright citizenship would be unable to obtain required identification. As they grow up, they would be denied the right to vote, serve on juries, hold certain jobs, and be a full member of American society, even though they were born in the U.S. and have never lived anywhere else.
For generations of families, birthright citizenship has represented the promise that their children can achieve their full potential as Americans and pursue their dreams. Children can dream of becoming lawyers, doctors, teachers, or even president – dreams that would be foreclosed if their citizenship were denied based on their parents‘ status. The order will stigmatize and send a message to exclusion to many others who will have their citizenship questioned because of their race or who their parents are. Excluding people born here will create a permanent underclass of people who have never been to another country and may be rendered stateless.
On February 10, 2025, a federal judge in New Hampshire granted the preliminary injunction blocking President Trump’s executive order seeking to strip certain babies born in the United States of their U.S. citizenship.