As the debate over birthright citizenship heats up in the United States, a clash between historical precedent and modern executive action has come to define one of the most consequential constitutional disputes of the decade. At the heart of the controversy is President Donald Trump’s executive order 14160, issued on his first day in office, which seeks to deny citizenship at birth to children born on U.S. soil if neither parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident. This move has ignited a firestorm of legal challenges, drawing in high-profile figures like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and prompting a nationwide injunction while the courts deliberate.
According to Newsweek, the Trump administration filed a consent motion in the District of Maryland on August 19, 2025, requesting an additional 30 days to respond to an amended complaint in the case CASA Inc. v. Trump. The legal battle centers on executive order 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” Under this order, citizenship at birth is denied when the mother is unlawfully or only temporarily present in the country and the father lacks U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent residency. The government’s lawyers argue that the children in question are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States, a phrase lifted directly from the 14th Amendment.
The stakes could hardly be higher. For more than a century, the 14th Amendment has guaranteed citizenship to almost everyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The Trump administration, however, is pushing for a reinterpretation, contending that the clause does not extend to the children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors. The government’s legal team claims that “jurisdiction” requires both “primary allegiance” and “permanent domicile”—criteria they argue undocumented immigrants and temporary residents do not meet.
This position stands in stark contrast to a longstanding bipartisan consensus. As reported by Creators Syndicate, Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State, defended the conventional understanding of birthright citizenship during his 2016 presidential campaign. At that time, Rubio’s lawyer, Jason Torchinsky, argued in a court motion that Rubio was a “natural born citizen” under the Constitution, regardless of his Cuban immigrant parents’ status at his birth. Torchinsky wrote, “Under the common law of England at the time of the American founding, under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, and under U.S. historical practice, anyone born in the United States, regardless of ancestry and immigration status of the parents, is a ‘natural born citizen’ under the Constitution.”
English common law, as Torchinsky pointed out, recognized only two exceptions to birthright citizenship: children of diplomats and foreign military invaders. When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, there was widespread agreement that individuals born in the United States to foreign parents—unless those parents were diplomats or hostile occupiers—were citizens by virtue of their birth. This understanding was reinforced by early judicial decisions and legislative debates, and the Supreme Court cemented it in 1898. In that landmark case, the justices held that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was indeed a U.S. citizen. The Court also recognized an additional exception: children of members of Indian tribes who owed direct allegiance to their tribes and thus were not subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
Despite these well-established precedents, Trump’s executive order has not fared well in the courts so far. On August 7, 2025, the District of Maryland granted a classwide preliminary injunction, blocking enforcement of the order nationwide for members of the certified class. The plaintiffs, led by immigrant-rights organization CASA, argue that birthright citizenship is a constitutional guarantee under the 14th Amendment. In their amended complaint, they contend that the executive order upends more than a century of settled law and threatens the legal status of hundreds of thousands of children born each year to undocumented parents.
The administration is not backing down. According to court filings cited by Newsweek, the Justice Department is preparing to ask the Supreme Court to review the issue in its next term. “To that end, the Solicitor General of the United States plans to seek certiorari expeditiously to enable the Supreme Court to settle the lawfulness of the Executive Order next Term, but he has not yet determined which case or combination of cases to take to the Court,” government attorneys wrote. Both sides have agreed to the extension request, and the government emphasized that “no party will be prejudiced by the relief requested herein.”
Legal experts and justices alike have weighed in on the controversy. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a Supreme Court session on May 15, criticized the administration’s approach, saying, “Your argument … would turn our justice system into a ‘catch me if you can’ kind of regime, in which everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor echoed this concern, remarking, “So, as far as I see it, this order violates four Supreme Court precedents.” Their comments underscore the deep legal skepticism facing the executive order.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the principle that even children of unauthorized residents are citizens by birth—a stance echoed by officials in both the executive and legislative branches over the years. Rubio’s attorney warned back in 2016 that “entertaining Mr. Librace’s argument would jeopardize centuries of precedent.” Yet, as of August 20, 2025, State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott insisted that Secretary of State Rubio is “100 percent aligned with President Trump’s agenda,” suggesting a shift in Rubio’s public position to match the administration’s hardline stance.
The immediate future of the executive order remains uncertain. With the Maryland court’s nationwide injunction in place, the order is unenforceable for now. The Justice Department’s extension request, if granted, will push the government’s deadline to respond to the plaintiffs’ amended complaint to September 22, 2025. Meanwhile, the solicitor general is strategizing which legal challenge to bring before the Supreme Court, aiming for a definitive ruling that could come as soon as 2026.
Should the Supreme Court take up the case, it would mark the most significant review of birthright citizenship since United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898. The outcome could reshape not only immigration law but also the very definition of what it means to be an American. As the legal and political battlelines are drawn, the fate of countless U.S.-born children—and the enduring promise of the 14th Amendment—hangs in the balance.
