Trump v. Barbara

Trump v. Barbara (No. 25-365) is a pending case before the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the compliance of Executive Order 14160 with the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Executive Order 14160 was signed in 2025 by President Donald Trump to end birthright citizenship for children of parents without U.S. citizenship or permanent residency.^[1]

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was enacted in 1868 following the American Civil War and emancipation of slaves, stating "[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".^[2] The Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) that citizenship did not extend to children of former slaves. Part of the goal in enacting the Fourteenth Amendment was to extend birthright citizenship to these children, overruling the Dred Scott decision. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth applied to all children born in the United States and granted birthright citizenship regardless of the citizenship status of the parents.^[2]

Donald Trump, in his 2024 presidential run, campaigned on dealing with undocumented immigrants and eliminating birthright citizenship.^[3] On the day after his inauguration, January 20, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14160, "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship", which ordered all departments of the executive branch to refuse to recognize children born to illegal immigrants or visa holders as citizens.^[4] An estimated 150,000 such children are born in the United States each year.^[5]

Multiple district court judges quickly blocked the order by issuing universal injunctions.^[6] These cases were consolidated into Trump v. CASA . The Trump administration asked the US Supreme Court to limit the injunctions to the plaintiffs who were suing against the order.^[7] On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that federal district courts generally cannot issue nationwide injunctions, but made no decision to the underlying birthright citizenship question.^[8] Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to endorse class-wide injunctions in his concurring opinion.^[8]

The day of the court's ruling in Trump v. CASA, the American Civil Liberties Union, seeing a class action as the best means to challenge the order, filed Barbara v. Trump asking the U.S District Court for the District of New Hampshire to grant a class-wide injunction covering those who would not qualify for birthright citizenship under the executive order.^[9] The representative plaintiff, Barbara, a Honduran citizen, is only known by her first name because she fears for her life and that of her family.^[10] CASA de Maryland filed a similar motion as well.^[11]

On July 10, 2025, Judge Joseph Laplante granted the ACLU's request, certified a class of born and unborn babies who would be deprived of their citizenship per the administration's policy, and issued a preliminary injunction blocking the order from being enforced upon that class.^{[12] [13] [14]}

A separate case, Washington v. Trump, that had been consolidated with Trump v. CASA at the Supreme Court and similarly had its nationwide injunction lifted, was heard in full by the Ninth Circuit in June 2025. The Ninth Circuit ruled in July 2025 that Trump's EO was unconstitutional, the first appeals court to reach this finding, and deemed that this case necessitated a national injunction based on the Supreme Court's limited exceptions outlined in CASA.^[15] Though the administration had also petitioned this decision to the Supreme Court, it had not been picked up along with the Barbara case.^[2]

The Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court in September 2025, challenging the district court's injunction in Barbara.^[16] The Supreme Court granted certiorari before judgment in December 2025.^[17]

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.^[18] 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".^[19] Birthright citizenship of Native Americans was later affirmed by the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924.

Eighteen amici curiae were filed in support of Trump.^[20] Those writing in support of Trump included New York University law professor Richard Epstein,^[21] 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;^[22] the Republican attorneys general of 25 U.S. states and Guam;^[23] and the Federation for American Immigration Reform.^[24]

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 ^[25] 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.^[26] Supporters also came from elected officials, including 217 Democratic members of Congress,^[27] more than 130 state and local governments and dozens of current and former judges,^[28] 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."^[29]

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,^[30] 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.^[31] Trump attended a portion of the oral arguments, a first for any sitting president in the official records.^{[32] [33]} U.S. solicitor general D. John Sauer represented the government's case, while Cecillia Wang of the ACLU represented the respondents.^[34]

Court observers stated that from the questioning, the majority of the court was skeptical of the government's position on birthright citizenship.^{[35] [36]} 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."^[34] 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.^[34]

• Order granting preliminary injunction and certifying provisional class issued by the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire
• District court docket on CourtListener
• "Argument Transcripts" (PDF). supremecourt.gov . April 1, 2026. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 3, 2026.
• LIVE: Supreme Court hears arguments on birthright citizenship. Associated Press. April 1, 2026 – via YouTube.

• United States Supreme Court cases in 2026
• United States Supreme Court cases
• United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court
• United States Citizenship Clause case law

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