In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, decided in 1898, the Supreme Court ruled 6–2 that a child born on American soil to foreign parents is a citizen of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision settled that birthright citizenship in this country turns on where a person is born, not on the nationality or immigration status of the parents. It remains the controlling Supreme Court statement on the Citizenship Clause, and it is once again at the center of American law as the Court weighs a new challenge in 2026.1Legal Information Institute. United States v Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649 (1898)
Who Wong Kim Ark Was
Wong Kim Ark was born in 1873 at 751 Sacramento Street in San Francisco. His parents were subjects of the Emperor of China who lived and ran a business in the city for years before eventually returning to China. Wong stayed. He lived and worked in San Francisco for more than two decades and traveled to China at least once without any trouble reentering.2National Archives. Departure Statement of Wong Kim Ark, 1894
His 1894 trip ended differently. When he sailed back into San Francisco aboard the steamship Coptic in August 1895, the Collector of Customs, John H. Wise, refused to let him land. The reason given was that Wong was “not a citizen of the United States” and therefore fell within the classes of people the Chinese Exclusion Acts barred from entering the country. He was held on the ship. A federal district court granted him a writ of habeas corpus and ordered him released as a citizen, and the government took the case to the Supreme Court.1Legal Information Institute. United States v Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649 (1898)
The question the Court had to answer was narrow to state and enormous in reach: did the Fourteenth Amendment make Wong a citizen at birth simply because he was born in the United States, even though his parents were foreign nationals barred by federal law from ever naturalizing?
The Constitutional Question
The opening sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment reads: “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.”3Congress.gov. Fourteenth Amendment Ratified in 1868, the amendment was drafted to overturn Dred Scott v. Sandford and to tie citizenship to geography rather than ancestry.
Two competing principles were available. Jus soli, or “right of the soil,” makes nationality follow the place of birth. Jus sanguinis, “right of blood,” makes it follow the parents. Everything in the case turned on which of these the Citizenship Clause had adopted, and on what the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was doing in the sentence.
What Each Side Argued
The federal government took the jus sanguinis position. Because the Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese nationals from naturalizing, Wong’s parents remained permanently under the sovereignty of the Chinese Emperor. On the government’s reading, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” required complete and exclusive political allegiance to the United States. Parents who owed allegiance elsewhere were not fully subject to American jurisdiction, and neither were their children. That theory would have limited birthright citizenship to children of citizens or of parents at least eligible to become citizens.
Wong’s position was that the clause meant what it said. Birth within American territory, to parents living peacefully under American law, produced an American citizen. The parents’ foreign nationality, and even their statutory inability to naturalize, was beside the point.
What the Court Held
Justice Horace Gray wrote for the six-justice majority and rejected the government’s argument. He traced the American understanding of citizenship back through centuries of English common law, particularly Calvin’s Case from 1608, under which anyone born within the king’s dominion was a natural-born subject, including the children of foreign nationals residing peacefully in the realm. Gray concluded that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment carried this territorial rule forward into the Citizenship Clause.1Legal Information Institute. United States v Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649 (1898)
On the disputed phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” Gray held that it excluded only a narrow set of people who are not truly under American legal authority. The opinion identified two common-law exceptions: children of foreign diplomats, who enjoy immunity from domestic law, and children born to members of an enemy force occupying American territory. The Court also acknowledged that members of Native American tribes stood in “a peculiar relation to the national government, unknown to the common law,” placing them in a separate category.
Outside those exceptions, the rule was flat. Birth on American soil to parents residing here and subject to American law produced a citizen at the moment of birth. The parents’ inability to naturalize did not matter. The Court held that Wong Kim Ark “has become at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. United States v Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649 (1898)
The Dissent
Chief Justice Melville Fuller, joined by Justice John Marshall Harlan, dissented. They read “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to require something more than being present under American law. In Fuller’s view it demanded being “completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.”5Supreme Court of the United States. United States v Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649 (1898)
Wong’s parents, Fuller argued, had never renounced their allegiance to China, were forbidden by Chinese law from doing so, and were barred by American law from naturalizing. On those facts, he concluded that they could not be completely subject to American jurisdiction, and that their children “necessarily remain themselves subject to the same sovereignty as their parents.” The dissent lost. Justice Joseph McKenna did not participate, producing the final 6–2 vote.
What the Decision Does Not Reach
Two limits on the ruling matter for anyone trying to apply it. First, in Elk v. Wilkins (1884), the Court had already held that Native Americans born as members of recognized tribes were not citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment, on reasoning that resembled Fuller’s later dissent. Congress addressed that separately through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which declared “all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States” to be citizens.6National Archives. Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
Second, the Wong Kim Ark principle does not extend uniformly to all U.S. territories. People born in American Samoa, an unincorporated territory, receive the status of non-citizen U.S. nationals rather than citizens.7U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual. Acquisition by Birth in American Samoa and Swains Island In Fitisemanu v. United States (2021), the Tenth Circuit held that neither the constitutional text nor Supreme Court precedent required extending birthright citizenship there, and emphasized that Congress holds the primary role in deciding citizenship questions for unincorporated territories.8Justia Law. Fitisemanu v United States, No 20-4017 (10th Cir 2021)
Why the Case Is Back in Court
In January 2025, Executive Order 14160 directed federal agencies to deny citizenship documents to children born in the United States when the mother was present unlawfully or on a temporary visa and the father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident. As a practical matter, that would have blocked affected children from receiving passports and Social Security numbers.
District courts in Washington, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire issued preliminary injunctions, finding challengers likely to prevail because the order contradicted the Fourteenth Amendment and 125 years of Supreme Court precedent. The Maryland court warned that denying citizenship “for any period of time” would cause irreparable harm, including the possibility of statelessness. The Ninth Circuit upheld its injunction, calling the order “invalid because it contradicted the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment’s grant of citizenship.” The Supreme Court granted review in December 2025 in Trump v. Barbara and heard oral arguments on April 1, 2026, with a decision expected by the end of June or early July 2026.9Congress.gov. Congressional Research Service Legal Sidebar LSB11313
Whatever the Court does with that case, it will be measured against the rule Justice Gray wrote in 1898: that the Fourteenth Amendment turned birthright citizenship into a question of geography, and left only a narrow set of people outside its reach.