Washington v. Trump: Birthright Citizenship at the Supreme Court

Washington v. Trump is the lawsuit Washington state filed on January 21, 2025 — one day after President Trump signed Executive Order 14160 — challenging his attempt to restrict birthright citizenship for children born on U.S. soil to certain immigrant parents. Joined by Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon, Washington won a preliminary injunction that blocked the order nationwide, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. The order has never taken effect. The Supreme Court took up the constitutional question in a companion case, Trump v. Barbara, heard argument on April 1, 2026, and is expected to rule by summer 2026.

What Executive Order 14160 Did

Signed on Trump’s first day back in office, January 20, 2025, the order directed federal agencies to deny U.S. citizenship to children born in the United States after February 19, 2025, in two situations. The first: the mother was unlawfully present and the father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident. The second: the mother’s presence was lawful but temporary — a student, work, or tourist visa, for example — and the father was again not a citizen or permanent resident.¹ Federal agencies were also prohibited from issuing or accepting documents recognizing citizenship for children in those categories.²

The “lawful but temporary” category reached beyond ordinary visa holders to parolees, recipients of Temporary Protected Status, people granted deferred action, and citizens of Pacific island nations living in the U.S. under Compacts of Free Association.³ Children with at least one parent who was a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, asylee, or refugee were unaffected.

Why Washington Sued

Attorney General Bob Ferguson had said for years that Washington would sue if any president tried to end birthright citizenship by executive action. The complaint went out the day after the order was signed. It argued the order violated the Fourteenth Amendment, contradicted the Immigration and Nationality Act’s codification of birthright citizenship at 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a), and exceeded the president’s executive authority.⁴

The states also claimed concrete economic injuries. They would lose federal reimbursements for programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program because affected infants would be treated as ineligible, and they would bear substantial costs overhauling eligibility-verification systems that depend on birth certificates and Social Security numbers.⁵

How the Lower Courts Ruled

The case moved fast. On January 23, 2025, three days after the order was signed, Judge Marsha Pechman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement nationwide.⁶ On February 6, 2025, she converted it into a preliminary injunction, finding that “any individual who is born in the territorial United States” is subject to U.S. jurisdiction and therefore a citizen. She held that the states faced irreparable economic harm, and that a universal injunction was necessary because a geographically limited one would not address their administrative and financial burdens.⁵

On July 23, 2025, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Judge Ronald M. Gould, joined by Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, held that Executive Order 14160 is “invalid and unconstitutional because it contradicts the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause” and the Immigration and Nationality Act.⁵

The panel leaned on the Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which established “the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion of the United States, notwithstanding alienage of the parents.” The Ninth Circuit noted that when Wong Kim Ark was decided, Chinese nationals were barred from naturalization and faced severely restrictive residency laws, yet the Supreme Court still recognized the American-born child of Chinese parents as a citizen. The administration’s reading, the majority wrote, was “contrary to the express language of the Citizenship Clause, the reasoning of Wong Kim Ark, Executive Branch practice for the past 125 years, the legislative history,” and “contrary to justice.”⁷

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay dissented in part on standing. He argued the states had not identified a cognizable sovereign interest, that their economic injuries were too speculative, and that any lost federal reimbursements were “self-inflicted.”⁵ That standing question would later shape which case reached the Supreme Court on the merits.

The Detour Through the Universal Injunctions Ruling

Before the Supreme Court reached the citizenship question, it addressed a procedural one. On March 13, 2025, the administration filed emergency applications asking the Court to partially stay the injunctions in Trump v. CASA, Inc., Trump v. Washington, and Trump v. New Jersey.⁸ On June 27, 2025, the Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. CASA, Inc. that universal injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts” under the Judiciary Act of 1789.⁹

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, held that founding-era equity was “party specific” and that no remedy “remotely like a national injunction” existed in early American or English courts. Complete relief for a plaintiff, she wrote, does not require universal relief. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, said the ruling “kneecaps the Judiciary’s authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies,” and Justice Jackson called the decision an “existential threat to the rule of law.”¹⁰

The Court did not touch the merits of the citizenship order. Cases were remanded to sort out narrower relief, but class-action certifications in parallel lawsuits in Maryland and New Hampshire quickly restored broad protections, and the order remained blocked.

The Case Before the Supreme Court Now

The administration filed petitions for certiorari on September 26, 2025, in both Trump v. Washington (No. 25-364) and Trump v. Barbara (No. 25-365).¹¹ On December 5, 2025, the Court granted certiorari before judgment and picked Barbara, a nationwide class action out of the District of New Hampshire, as the vehicle for deciding the merits. Choosing Barbara sidestepped the state-standing question Judge Bumatay had raised in the Ninth Circuit.¹²

The Government’s Position

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the Fourteenth Amendment’s phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means more than physical presence. It requires being “completely subject” to U.S. “political jurisdiction,” which in turn requires “direct and immediate allegiance” — a condition the government said is established through lawful domicile.¹³ Under that theory, undocumented immigrants cannot form a domicile, temporary visitors are domiciled elsewhere, and neither group’s children come within the clause.

The government’s originalist reading holds that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to overrule Dred Scott v. Sandford and confer citizenship on freed slaves, not to guarantee it universally to children of foreign nationals. It cited Elk v. Wilkins (1884) and 1866 congressional debates about children “born here of parents from abroad temporarily in this country.”¹⁴ As for Wong Kim Ark, the government pointed to the opinion’s description of that child’s parents as aliens “enjoying a permanent domicil and residence” in the United States.

The Challengers’ Position

Cecillia Wang of the ACLU, for the respondents, argued that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excludes only the narrow common-law categories: children of foreign diplomats, children born on foreign ships, and children of hostile occupying forces. The phrase describes geography, not allegiance.¹⁵

The challengers said the Framers would have written a domicile requirement into the text had they intended one, and that Wong Kim Ark‘s references to domicile were descriptive rather than dispositive. They also argued the order independently violates 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a), because Congress enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1952 against the settled understanding that birthright citizenship does not depend on parental domicile.¹⁵

Oral Argument and the Expected Ruling

The Court heard argument in Trump v. Barbara on April 1, 2026. President Trump attended part of the session, the first sitting president to be present for a Supreme Court oral argument.¹⁶

Several justices pressed hard on the government. Chief Justice Roberts, after Sauer invoked modern immigration concerns, said: “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”¹⁷ Justice Gorsuch called it “striking” that neither the text nor the drafting debates mention parents or domicile.¹⁸ Justice Kagan told Sauer that “the text of the clause, I think, does not support you” and questioned the “magnitude of the evidence” needed to upend more than a century of settled practice.

Justice Jackson raised concern that the government’s theory would let Congress dictate the reach of the Citizenship Clause, the very thing the amendment was drafted to prevent. Justice Barrett, seen by observers as a possible swing vote, asked how citizenship would be determined at birth when parental intent about domicile might be unknowable.¹⁸

Court watchers described a majority likely to rule against the administration, with projections of a 7-2 or 6-3 decision for the challengers and Justices Thomas and Alito as the most probable dissents.¹⁹ As of late June 2026, the decision has not been released and is expected by late June or early July 2026.²⁰

1
Federal Register. Executive Order 14160
2
The White House. Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship
3
USCIS. Implementation Plan of Executive Order 14160
4
League of Women Voters. Washington v. Trump: Birthright Citizenship Executive Order Challenge
5
U.S. Courts for the Ninth Circuit. State of Washington v. Trump, No. 25-807
6
U.S. Department of Justice. Trump v. Washington Petition
7
Constitutional Accountability Center. State of Washington v. Trump
8
Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Washington, No. 24A885
9
Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. CASA, Inc.
10
SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Sides With Trump Administration on Nationwide Injunctions
11
U.S. Department of Justice. Trump v. Washington Petition
12
SCOTUSblog. Trump v. Barbara
13
SCOTUSblog. The Key Arguments in the Birthright Citizenship Case
14
Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Barbara Government Brief
15
Cornell Law Institute. Trump v. Barbara
16
SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Appears Likely to Side Against Trump on Birthright Citizenship
17
SCOTUSblog. Birthright Citizenship Oral Argument Highlights
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Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Barbara Oral Argument Transcript
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SCOTUSblog. What Oral Argument Told Us in the Birthright Citizenship Case
20
Oyez. Trump v. Barbara