Overview
- President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order seeks to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents who are undocumented or temporarily present, but the policy has not taken effect.
- Lower courts across multiple cases have blocked the order as unconstitutional or likely unconstitutional, and a New Hampshire judge certified a nationwide class of affected babies and issued an injunction.
- The Supreme Court granted review of the New Hampshire class action and left a separate states’ case from the 9th Circuit untouched at this stage.
- In a June ruling, the Court curtailed nationwide injunctions by district judges yet left room for broad relief via class actions or suits by states, without addressing the citizenship question’s merits.
- Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues the Citizenship Clause does not cover children of temporary visitors or illegal entrants, while the ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund cite the 1898 Wong Kim Ark precedent and warn of practical harms for families and schools.