Regan v. King was a 1942 federal lawsuit in which the Native Sons of the Golden West tried to strip American-born Japanese Americans of their United States citizenship by persuading the courts to overturn United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 Supreme Court decision establishing birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. The suit lost at the district court, lost again at the Ninth Circuit, and was turned away by the Supreme Court in May 1943. Its arguments have resurfaced in the 2026 birthright-citizenship case Trump v. Barbara.
Who Brought the Case and Why
In May 1942, with more than 120,000 Japanese Americans already being forced from their homes under Executive Order 9066, the Native Sons of the Golden West held their 65th Grand Parlor and voted to launch a legal campaign against Japanese American citizenship.1Densho Encyclopedia. Regan v. King The plaintiff was John T. Regan, the organization’s Grand Secretary. The defendant was Cameron King, the registrar of voters in San Francisco County.
On its face, the suit was narrow. It named 90 Nisei — American citizens of Japanese descent born on U.S. soil — and asked the court to remove them from the voting rolls for the August 1942 primary and to bar them from voting for the duration of the war.1Densho Encyclopedia. Regan v. King The real target was Wong Kim Ark. If the courts could be persuaded that the Fourteenth Amendment did not confer citizenship on the American-born children of Japanese immigrants, birthright citizenship for the children of all non-white immigrants would be open to challenge.2Densho. Birthright Citizenship and Japanese Americans The Native Sons also announced plans to sponsor a constitutional amendment excluding all persons of Japanese ancestry from American citizenship.
The Native Sons was an established force in California’s anti-Asian politics. Founded in 1875, restricted for most of its history to white men born in California, it had helped lobby for the Immigration Act of 1924 and had spent decades pushing for restrictions on Japanese residents through its newspaper The Grizzly Bear.3Densho Encyclopedia. Native Sons of the Golden West / Native Daughters of the Golden West4Densho Encyclopedia. California Joint Immigration Committee Earl Warren, then California’s attorney general and a candidate for governor, was a member of the organization and pledged his support for the lawsuit.1Densho Encyclopedia. Regan v. King5Densho Encyclopedia. Earl Warren
The Argument in Court
Counsel for the Native Sons was Ulysses S. Webb, California’s longtime attorney general, who had spent decades enforcing the state’s Alien Land Laws against Japanese immigrants. Webb stated the theory of the case in explicit racial terms. He told the court that the suit concerned “the citizenship and right to citizenship of all peoples and all races who do not fall within the characterization or description of white people.” He argued that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had been created “by and for white people” and that Wong Kim Ark had been “erroneously decided.”1Densho Encyclopedia. Regan v. King
Who Defended Japanese American Citizenship
The defense had to be assembled under extraordinary conditions. Saburo Kido, the national president of the Japanese American Citizens League, was himself confined in an internment camp. Along with past JACL president Walter Tsukamoto, Kido worked from behind barbed wire to prepare an amicus curiae brief, reaching out to allies on the outside: A.L. Wirin of the American Civil Liberties Union and Hugh Macbeth, a Harvard-educated African American civil rights attorney in Los Angeles.1Densho Encyclopedia. Regan v. King
Macbeth had investigated the internment of Issei farmers in Montana and concluded that the removals were driven by white agricultural interests seeking Japanese-owned land rather than by security concerns.6BlackPast. Defending Nikkei: Hugh Macbeth and Japanese American Internment To broaden the coalition, the JACL recruited Thomas L. Griffith, president of the NAACP’s Southern California branch. The amicus brief, filed on February 17, 1943, was signed by Kido, Tsukamoto, Macbeth, Griffith, and Wirin.1Densho Encyclopedia. Regan v. King
A key section of the brief, likely drafted by Macbeth, argued that if the Native Sons succeeded in stripping Japanese Americans of citizenship, they would turn their attention to African Americans next. The brief called the Native Sons’ assurances that Black citizenship was not at stake “disingenuous.” Scholars regard the collaboration as a pioneering moment of multiracial civil rights coalition-building and an origin point of the postwar alliance between African American and Japanese American lawyers.1Densho Encyclopedia. Regan v. King
How the Courts Ruled
The case moved through three levels of the federal judiciary, and the Native Sons lost at every one.
On July 2, 1942, Federal District Court Judge Adolphus St. Sure rejected the suit, holding that birthright citizenship was settled law under the Fourteenth Amendment and United States v. Wong Kim Ark.1Densho Encyclopedia. Regan v. King The case was docketed as civil number 22178 in the Northern District of California.7National Archives. Federal Court Cases Related to the Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II
The Native Sons appealed. On February 19, 1943, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard argument. Judge Curtis did not wait for the defense to speak. He sustained the lower court’s decision and declared that it was “not necessary for the court to hear further argument.” The appellate court cited the Fourteenth Amendment along with Wong Kim Ark and Perkins v. Elg.8CaseMine. John T. Regan v. Cameron King
On May 17, 1943, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, ending the case.1Densho Encyclopedia. Regan v. King
Why the Case Still Matters
Regan v. King has returned to the national legal conversation through Trump v. Barbara (No. 25-365), a 2026 Supreme Court case challenging Executive Order 14,160, which directed federal agencies to deny citizenship documents to certain children born in the United States to parents in the country unlawfully or on a temporary basis. The order is the most significant challenge to birthright citizenship since Wong Kim Ark was decided in 1898.9JURIST. Trump v. Barbara: The Supreme Court Case That Could Redefine Birthright Citizenship
In a February 2026 amicus curiae brief, Professor Amanda L. Tyler of Berkeley Law invoked the history of Regan v. King to argue that the current administration’s legal theory is not new. Tyler noted that even during the mass incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans — a period the Supreme Court itself later called a “wartime constitutional stain” — the courts and senior government officials including Attorney General Francis Biddle and Secretary of War Henry Stimson consistently acknowledged that Japanese Americans born on U.S. soil were American citizens whose status was settled by the Fourteenth Amendment.10Supreme Court of the United States. Amicus Brief of Professor Amanda L. Tyler, Trump v. Barbara The administration has countered that Wong Kim Ark should be read narrowly, applying only to children of parents with permanent residence in the country, and not to children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors.9JURIST. Trump v. Barbara: The Supreme Court Case That Could Redefine Birthright Citizenship
Oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara were scheduled for April 1, 2026.9JURIST. Trump v. Barbara: The Supreme Court Case That Could Redefine Birthright Citizenship The constitutional principle the Native Sons of the Golden West attacked in a San Francisco courtroom in 1942 is again before the nation’s highest court.