The legal battle over President Donald Trump's executive order targeting birthright citizenship moves to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, with the ACLU preparing to argue that eliminating automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil would overturn 128 years of settled law.
Cody Wofsy, the ACLU's lead counsel on the case and deputy director of its Immigrants' Rights Project, frames the dispute as something larger than technical constitutional interpretation. At its core, he argues, the case asks whether the nation will uphold foundational principles about who belongs as an American.
The challenge rests on bedrock historical ground. Since the 14th Amendment's ratification in 1868, birthright citizenship has been understood as fundamental: a person born within U.S. borders automatically becomes a citizen, regardless of their parents' immigration status. That principle, Wofsy notes, did not originate with the Constitution but traces back to English common law, where it originally served monarchical purposes.
The Framers adapted the concept for a different purpose. In the early American republic, the birthright rule became a guarantor of equal citizenship and opportunity. As successive waves of immigrants arrived—Irish, Germans, and others—the doctrine ensured their children held the same standing as those whose families had arrived on the Mayflower. Citizenship status would not depend on ancestral pedigree.
Trump's order seeks to reinterpret the 14th Amendment to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. whose parents lack lawful immigration status. The challenge, backed by ACLU legal director Cecilia Wang and Wofsy's team, contends the order conflicts with both the constitutional text and more than a century of legal precedent.
As oral arguments approach, the legal team is working through technical constitutional arguments and the historical record. But Wofsy emphasizes that the case ultimately turns on a choice about American identity. Will the courts preserve what he describes as the nation's better historical traditions—the idea that birthplace determines citizenship and that equal protection applies regardless of parental origin—or permit a reversal of that long-standing understanding?
The Supreme Court's decision will reshape immigration law and citizenship doctrine for millions of Americans.
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