What's at risk if SCOTUS sides with Trump in birthright citizenship case
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The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday over President Trump's executive order restricting birthright citizenship in a case that could decide who gets to be an American.
Why it matters: A ruling in Trump's favor could reshape America's racial makeup and create a caste system that leaves millions without rights.
Threat level: Trump's order — which limits citizenship to children born in the U.S. with at least one parent legally in the country — would bar entire swaths of children from work authorization, certain jobs, Social Security, passports, SNAP, Medicaid, and voting.
- According to a 2025 report by UCLA's Latino Policy and Politics Institute, the order disproportionately affects immigrants of color. About 75% of children born to noncitizens are Latino, 12% are Asian American, 6% are white, and 5% are Black.
Between the lines: Some children could end up stateless, should their parents' home nation(s) refuse to grant them citizenship after a U.S. birth.
- International treaties discourage statelessness because it can leave people without legal rights.
- The policy could also force noncitizens to choose between remaining in the U.S. while risking their children's status or seeking documentation from countries they left.
The intrigue: The order effectively undermines more than a century of legal precedent interpreting the 14th Amendment.
- The amendment, ratified after the Civil War, guarantees citizenship to all people born on U.S. soil, with narrow exceptions. The Supreme Court affirmed that understanding in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898, in which a child of Chinese immigrants was ruled to be a citizen even though his parents were not.
- The Supreme Court upholding the policy would also mean children of DACA recipients, H-1B visa holders, people with temporary protected status, and those granted humanitarian parole could lose automatic citizenship.
"It's the irony of it all," Abraham Paulos, deputy director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, tells Axios.
- He said the 14th Amendment aimed to prevent Confederates from stripping Black people of equal protection under the law, and now advocates are fighting off similar attacks from the president.
- "I see the Trump regime attack on the 14th Amendment… as a part of a white supremacist, white nativist messaging and narrative," he said.
What they're saying: "The Supreme Court has the opportunity to review the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause and restore the meaning of citizenship in the United States to its original public meaning," a White House spokesperson told Axios in an emailed statement.
- "This case will have enormous consequences for the security of all Americans. The Trump Administration looks forward to making its case on the issue of birthright citizenship on behalf of the American people."
Zoom out: Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, tells Axios that he thinks the Supreme Court is likely to rule against the president.
- He says a decision to the contrary would be like declaring "open season on questioning the citizenship" of Americans and "suggesting that there are 'real Americans,' and then there are other people who don't belong in this country."
- "That's part and parcel with the broader effort by the Trump administration to use immigration tools to reshape the demographics of this country," he said.
What we're watching: Wofsy said a ruling reaffirming birthright citizenship will "go a long way to diffusing the harm that's done by the executive order and sending the right message to all Americans that we're all of us equal."
