Attorney General Bonta Continues Fight to Defend Birthright Citizenship at U.S. Supreme Court

Alongside multistate coalition, warns of devastating impacts to children nationwide

OAKLAND— California Attorney General Rob Bonta today continued his defense of birthright citizenship by co-leading a coalition of 24 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in Trump v. Barbara at the U.S. Supreme Court. On his first day in office in 2025, President Trump issued an order seeking to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to immigrant parents. Attorney General Bonta immediately co-led a coalition in filing a lawsuit challenging the order and repeatedly obtained nationwide preliminary injunctions that blocked this executive order from ever taking effect. The Supreme Court is now considering the validity of this order in a separate case brought by a class of children who would lose citizenship under the order. In today’s brief, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition urge the Supreme Court to find the executive order in violation of the Citizenship Clause, binding Supreme Court precedent, and the Immigration and Nationality Act. 

“For nearly our entire nation’s history, we have recognized that those born here, subject to our laws, are Americans, fully and equally. The text of the Constitution and more than a century of precedent make clear: birthright citizenship is a right, and President Trump cannot undo that by fiat,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Every branch of government, across Administrations, has affirmed birthright citizenship, and the U.S. Supreme Court should uphold that right.”

Since the beginning of our nation’s history, the United States has followed the common law tradition that those born on U.S. soil are subject to its laws and are citizens by birth. Although the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott denied birthright citizenship to the descendants of enslaved people, the United States in 1868 adopted the Fourteenth Amendment to protect citizenship for children born in the country. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause explicitly promises that “[a]ll 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.” The Supreme Court affirmed this constitutional guarantee in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, holding that all children born in the United States, including those born to immigrants, were citizens.    

Now, the Trump Administration seeks to strip hundreds of thousands of children born each year of their ability to fully and fairly be a part of American society as rightful citizens, with all the benefits and privileges, including an estimated 24,500 children born annually in California. These children would lose their most basic rights and be forced to live under the threat of deportation. Some babies will be stateless, lacking a home country to return to. 

The executive order would also severely harm California and other states by jeopardizing federal funding for essential programs that they administer, such as Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program; these programs are conditioned on the citizenship and immigration status of the children they serve. Yet, these children would still require healthcare, education, and social services, forcing states to absorb the costs. If the order went into effect, states would be required — on little notice and at considerable expense — to immediately begin modifying their operation and administration of benefits programs to account for this change. 

Even more alarming, although the order that President Trump signed indicates it would only apply to babies born within the United States after 30 days from the date of the order, there is no reason to believe that the Trump Administration would stop there if the Supreme Court were to side with its theories.

Attorney General Bonta leads the coalition in filing the brief along with New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. They are joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai'i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, along with the City and County of San Francisco.