Supreme Court decision upholds birthright citizenship

Majority opinion:

pinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2025

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

1

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL.

v. BARBARA ET AL.

CERTIORARI BEFORE JUDGMENT TO THE UNITED STATES

COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT

No. 25–365. Argued April 1, 2026—Decided June 30, 2026

The question presented is whether the Constitution guarantees citizen-

ship to children born in the United States of parents who are unlaw-

fully or temporarily present in the country. Under the Citizenship

Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, “[a]ll persons born or natural-

ized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are

citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” On

January 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 14160,

titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship. The

Order provides that children born in the United States of parents who

are unlawfully or temporarily present here are not “subject to the ju-

risdiction” of the United States—and thus do not qualify for citizenship

under the Fourteenth Amendment or the Immigration and Nationality

Act (INA), which uses the same language. 90 Fed. Reg. 8449. Several

parents filed suit, some in the name of their children, arguing that the

Executive Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the INA.

The District Court agreed, provisionally certified a nationwide class of

children who would be denied citizenship by the Order, and prelimi-

narily enjoined the Order’s enforcement. This Court granted certiorari

before judgment.

Held: Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or tem-

porarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States

and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizen-

ship Clause. Pp. 2–26.

(a) The Citizenship Clause must be understood in light of its histor-

ical context, from the English common law to the widespread condem-

nation of the Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393.2 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Syllabus

Pp. 2–9.

(1) Under the English common law, children “born within the [sov-

ereign’s] dominions” owed a natural “allegiance” to the sovereign who

protected them at birth, 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws

of England 354, 356 (Blackstone), regardless of how “momentary and

uncertain” their presence, Calvin’s Case, 7 Co. Rep. 1a, 6a, 77 Eng.

Rep. 377, 384. Such children were therefore “natural-born subject[s].”

Doe v. Jones, 4 T. R. 300, 308, 100 Eng. Rep. 1031, 1035. The same

rule applied to children born of parents subject to expulsion. See, e.g.,

4 Blackstone 166. The rule’s exceptions were narrow: children born in

lands the sovereign did not control, children born in areas temporarily

outside the sovereign’s control, and children of foreign ministers (by a

fiction of extraterritoriality). Calvin’s Case, 7 Co. Rep., at 18a–18b, 77

Eng. Rep., at 399.

This common law of citizenship—known as jus soli, or right of the

soil—crossed the Atlantic and prevailed in “each and all of the states”

after American independence. 2 J. Kent, Commentaries on American

Law 39, n. a (Kent). The rule was applied even to the novel situation

of quasi-sovereign Indian tribes, who maintained “dominion[s]” of

their own such that Indians born under those dominions were not “cit-

izens” but members of “alien and sovereign tribes.” Goodell v. Jackson

ex dem. Smith, 20 Johns. 693, 714–715 (N. Y. Ct. Corr. Errors). In a

Nation of immigrants, jus soli’s broad scope took on particular im-

portance, assuring that children of foreigners—including those here on

a “temporary sojourn,” Lynch v. Clarke, 1 Sand. Ch. 583, 638, 663–664

(N. Y. Ch.)—would be American citizens by birth alone. Pp. 2–6.

(2) In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Court departed from the com-

mon law and adopted the view that blood, not soil, determined citizen-

ship; it held that those descended from slaves could not be citizens. 19

How., at 419. The decision was met with shock, see D. Potter, The

Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, p. 281; 3 Writings of Abraham Lincoln

55, and abolitionists swore to undo what the Court had done, see 2 Life

and Writings of Frederick Douglass 259, 415, 424. Pp. 6–8.

(3) In the midst of the Civil War, Attorney General Edward Bates

issued a landmark opinion citing key authorities, including Calvin’s

Case and Kent’s Commentaries, rejecting the premise that “citizenship

is ever hereditary,” and declaring that “every person born in the coun-

try is, at the moment of birth, prima facie a citizen, . . . without any

reference to race or color.” 10 Op. Atty Gen. 382, 394, 399. The excep-

tions were “few”—“the small and admitted class of the natural-born

composed of the children of foreign ministers and the like.” Id., at 397.

Following the war, Congress sought to turn Bates’s opinion into law

by enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which made citizens of “all

persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power,Cite as: 609 U. S. ___ (2026)

3

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excluding Indians not taxed.” §1, 14 Stat. 27. The Act was simply

assumed to invoke the common law rule. See Cong. Globe, 39th Cong.,

1st Sess., 1116 (Rep. Wilson); id., at 1832 (Rep. Lawrence). Pp. 8–9.

(b) What the Civil Rights Act began, the Fourteenth Amendment,

and its repudiation of Dred Scott, would finish. Pp. 9–12.

(1) The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause mirrored the

common law’s criteria for citizenship, starting with territory (a child

must be “born . . . in the United States”) and ending with sovereign

power (a child must be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United

States). A child born on American soil and subject to American law

was made an American citizen. Even the language of the Clause is

that of the common law, echoing cases and treatises that described the

common law rule. See, e.g., Lynch, 1 Sand. Ch., at 668; Kent 38 and n.

a. And its principal author explained that its language was “simply

declaratory of . . . the law of the land already.” Cong. Globe, 39th

Cong., 1st Sess., 2890 (Sen. Howard). Pp. 9–10.

(2) The Citizenship Clause’s key phrase—“subject to the jurisdic-

tion”—refers to the power of the United States to govern those within

its territory. N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Lan-

guage 732 (def. “jurisdiction”); J. Worcester, Dictionary of the English

Language 1435 (def. “subject”). The scope of that power was settled

largely by Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, 7 Cranch 116, where

Chief Justice Marshall explained that “jurisdiction” referred to “the

full and complete power of a nation within its own territories,” “sus-

ceptible of no limitation not imposed” by the nation itself. Id., at 136.

The narrow exceptions to jurisdiction arose where exercising jurisdic-

tion would “degrade the dignity” of “foreign sovereigns”—most fre-

quently in the case of “foreign ministers.” Id., at 136–139. But private

individuals who traveled to the United States for “business or caprice”

were “amenable to the jurisdiction of the country.” Id., at 144. Chil-

dren born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily

present here are thus subject to the Nation’s jurisdiction. Pp. 10–12.

(c) The Court’s precedent in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169

U. S. 649, confirms this rule. Pp. 13–16.

(1) For nearly two decades after the Amendment’s ratification, the

Executive Branch viewed the Citizenship Clause as “simply an affir-

mance of the common law,” with the limited exception of “the children

of foreign ministers,” and others “with rights of extraterritoriality.”

Memorandum of Secretary of State H. Fish to Mr. Marsh (May 19,

1871), in 2 Digest of the International Law of the United States §183,

p. 394. But the end of the Reconstruction era brought uncertainty.

Around that time, the State Department began to deny citizenship to

those with “dual or doubtful allegiance,” id., at 402, and several schol-

ars proposed a new international-law based theory of the Citizenship4 TRUMP v. BARBARA

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Clause, focused on the parents’ status, not the child’s, F. Wharton,

Conflict of Laws §10, p. 35. Only if a child’s parents were “domiciled

in the United States” was the child “internationally subject to the ju-

risdiction of the United States,” as the Citizenship Clause (they said)

required. Id., §12, at 41–42 (emphasis added). Acknowledging that

the common law took a different view, these writers insisted that jus

soli had not been made part of the Constitution. Pp. 13–14.

(2) In Wong Kim Ark, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amend-

ment was “declaratory” of the “fundamental rule of citizenship by

birth” that prevailed at common law, 169 U. S., at 688, excluding only

those recognized as exempt “from the jurisdiction of this country”—the

“children of ambassadors” and those born in the nations of Indian

tribes, id., at 675, 681–683, 693. All others were citizens at birth,

whether born to permanent residents or temporary visitors. See id.,

at 676, 687–688. The Court wrote that the words “ ‘subject to the ju-

risdiction thereof’ ” “must be presumed to have been understood . . . in

the same sense” as Chief Justice Marshall used them in Schooner Ex-

change. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S., at 687. Under that understanding,

aliens who traveled to the United States for “business or pleasure” re-

ceived no “exemption from the jurisdiction of the country.” Id., at 686.

To the contrary, they were subject to that jurisdiction for as long as

they remained here—and any children born to them were American

citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment. See id., at 682–688.

Pp. 14–16.

(d) Arguments for limiting birthright citizenship to those domiciled

in the United States fail. These arguments err in their definition of

“allegiance,” contending that natural allegiance was no longer suffi-

cient for citizenship and that some greater quantum of allegiance

(based on domicile) was required. There is scant evidence for this dra-

matically revisionist view; sources from 1776 to 1868 defined “alle-

giance by birth” just as the British did—as “the tie or duty” owed by

one who is “born within the dominions and under the protection of a

particular sovereign.” Inglis v. Trustees of Sailor’s Snug Harbour in

City of New York, 3 Pet. 99, 155.

Domicile and national citizenship are distinct concepts; one who es-

tablishes a domicile in a new country does not automatically become a

citizen thereof, nor does he automatically lose his prior citizenship.

The congressional debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the

Fourteenth Amendment confirm the common law rule. Statements

embracing the common law rule were far more frequent and explicit

than ambiguous references to “temporary sojourners.” See, e.g., Cong.

Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1117. For a Congress intent on putting

the question of citizenship “once and forever [to] rest,” Cong. Globe,

42d Cong., 1st Sess. 575, a domicile-based qualification would haveCite as: 609 U. S. ___ (2026)

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introduced significant uncertainty. Yet the word “domicile” appears

just twice in the discussion of the relevant provision of the Civil Rights

Act, see Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 1160; id., at 1117, and in

only one speech from the Citizenship Clause debates, see id., at 3031–

3032. Sources from after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amend-

ment do not put in doubt the understanding of the Citizenship Clause

at the time of (and after) its ratification. In any case, postenactment

history cannot override the text. If Congress intended to limit Ameri-

can citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States,

nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed

that design; words appearing frequently in the Executive Order—

“mother,” “father,” “lawful,” “temporary”—are absent from the Clause.

Attempts to narrow Wong Kim Ark by noting that the Court’s opin-

ion repeatedly referred to the domicile of Wong’s parents fail because

the holding’s underlying reasoning cannot be squared with a domicile

requirement; the Court exhaustively canvassed the text and history of

the Citizenship Clause and at no point identified any evidence that the

ratifiers thought themselves to be imposing a domicile limitation.

Pp. 17–26.

Affirmed.

ROBERTS, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which

SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, BARRETT, and JACKSON, JJ., joined. JACKSON, J.,

filed a concurring opinion, in which SOTOMAYOR, J., joined as to the in-

troduction and Part I. KAVANAUGH, J., filed an opinion concurring in the

judgment and dissenting in part. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion,

in which GORSUCH, J., joined. ALITO, J., and GORSUCH, J., filed dissenting

opinions.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

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Opinion of the Court

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of

Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543,

pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 25–365

_________________

DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED

STATES, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. BARBARA, ET AL.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI BEFORE JUDGMENT TO THE UNITED

STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT

[June 30, 2026]

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the

Court.

At issue in this case is whether the Constitution guaran-

tees citizenship to children born of parents unlawfully or

temporarily present in the United States.

I

The Fourteenth Amendment provides:

“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 re-

side.”

On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive

Order No. 14160, titled Protecting the Meaning and Value

of American Citizenship. The Order provides that children

born of persons unlawfully or temporarily present in the

United States are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the

United States—and thus do not qualify for citizenship un-

der the Fourteenth Amendment or the Immigration and2 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

Nationality Act (INA), which uses the same language. 90

Fed. Reg. 8449.1

Several parents filed suit, some on their own behalf, oth-

ers on behalf of (and in the name of ) their children. They

argued that the Executive Order violates the Fourteenth

Amendment and the INA. The District Court agreed. 790

F. Supp. 3d 80, 101–102 (NH 2025). It provisionally certi-

fied a nationwide class of children who would be denied cit-

izenship by the Order and preliminarily enjoined the Or-

der’s enforcement. Id., at 105–106. We granted certiorari

before judgment. 607 U. S. 1079 (2025).

II

To understand the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment, it is first necessary to understand the context

in which it arose—and the opinion of this Court, Dred Scott

v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), that it rejected.

A

The story of citizenship in the United States begins with

the English common law. Before the Revolution, the Amer-

ican colonists—like all in the British Empire—were consid-

ered subjects of the sovereign. See Inglis v. Trustees of

Sailor’s Snug Harbour in City of New York, 3 Pet. 99, 120–

121 (1830). That arose not from royal fiat, but from what

the common law conceived as the relationship between the

sovereign and the people. The King, Blackstone explained,

owes those “born within the dominions” a duty of

——————

1 In full, the Executive Order declares that “the privilege of United

States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the

United States: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in

the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or law-

ful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that

person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said per-

son’s birth was lawful but temporary . . . and the father was not a United

States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s

birth.” Exec. Order No. 14160, 90 Fed. Reg. 8449 (2025).Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

3

Opinion of the Court

“protection.” 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws

of England 354 (1765) (Blackstone); see also id., at 358.

And “in return for that protection,” those “born within the

dominions” owe the King a “duty” of “allegiance” (some-

times rendered “ligeance”). Id., at 354, 356. Children born

with that allegiance were “natural-born subject[s].” Doe v.

Jones, 4 T. R. 300, 308, 100 Eng. Rep. 1031, 1035 (K. B.

1791) (Kenyon, C. J.). As Lord Coke put it in the celebrated

Calvin’s Case, 7 Co. Rep. 1a, 77 Eng. Rep. 377 (K. B. 1608),

a “dual and reciprocal tie” thus connects “the Sovereign and

[his] subject[s].” Id., at 4b–5a, 77 Eng. Rep., at 382 (trans-

lated from Latin).

Because the sovereign’s power (and thus his duty) was

limited in various respects, so too was the scope of this rule.

He could not demand allegiance from—for he could not pro-

tect—those born in lands that he did not control. Id., at

18a, 77 Eng. Rep., at 399. (Among that group were the peo-

ple born in the King’s lost dominions—“France, Aquitain,

Normandy, &c.”—over which he claimed an “absolute right”

but had no actual power to rule. Ibid.) The same held true

even in discrete areas within his kingdom that were tempo-

rarily outside his control. See id., at 18a–18b, 77 Eng. Rep.,

at 399 (if “enemies” were to “possess” a “castle or fort,” their

children would not be born “under the King’s ligeance”).

And the same held true for ambassadors (and their fami-

lies), who were considered—by a fiction of extraterritorial-

ity—to remain on foreign soil and thus “under the ligeance”

of their home country. Id., at 18a, 77 Eng. Rep., at 399; see

also Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, 7 Cranch 116, 138–

139 (1812) (Marshall, C. J., for the Court).

In all other respects, however, the sovereign’s power—

and his claim to the people’s allegiance—was complete. A

foreign mother could enter the British Isles, give birth, and

leave with her child the very next day, and that child would

remain a British subject. Why? Because the child owed an

implied allegiance to the sovereign who protected him at his4 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

birth—no matter how “momentary and uncertain” his pres-

ence in the King’s realms.2 Calvin’s Case, 7 Co. Rep., at 6a,

77 Eng. Rep., at 384; see also Doe, 4 T. R., at 308, 100 Eng.

Rep., at 1035. The same rule applied to children born in the

realm of parents subject to expulsion. For example, chil-

dren of “gypsies” (today, called Romani or Roma people)

born in the realm were natural-born subjects, notwith-

standing that British law at the time “directed” the Roma

people “to avoid the realm” under “pain of imprisonment”

or even death. 4 Blackstone 166 (1769); see Brief for Gerard

N. Magliocca as Amicus Curiae 2–4; cf. H. Hirota, Expelling

the Poor 114–115 (2017) (describing outcry in 1855 when

Massachusetts deported a pauper Irish mother with her

American-born infant, who was acknowledged to be a “na-

tive born citizen”). For those children, and all others born

in Britain, the rule was the same: With protection came al-

legiance, and with allegiance came the status of a natural-

born subject.

This view crossed the Atlantic with the colonists—and

was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution, as

“subject[s]” of the sovereign became “citizens” of the States.

See State v. Manuel, 20 N. C. 144, 152 (1838). This common

law of citizenship—known as jus soli, or right of the soil—

prevailed in “each and all of the states” after American in-

dependence, and continued to emphasize reciprocal “alle-

giance” and “protection.” 2 J. Kent, Commentaries on

American Law 38–39, n. a, 40 (6th ed. 1848) (Kent). By “the

doctrine of natural allegiance,” all “who [we]re born within

the jurisdiction of a State” were citizens. W. Yates, Rights

——————

2 The mother, too, owed the British King allegiance “for so long [a] time

as [she] continue[d]” in his territory. 1 Blackstone 358. But her alle-

giance was just “local and temporary”—the product of her presence in

the British realm. J. Wharton, Law Lexicon 40 (E. Hopper ed., 2d Am.

ed. 1860). Unlike the lasting allegiance of her natural-born son, the

mother’s allegiance was extinguished as soon as she left the British do-

minions.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

5

Opinion of the Court

of Colored Men 36 (1838) (Yates); see W. Rawle, A View of

the Constitution of the United States of America 86 (2d ed.

1829).

When the newly independent Americans confronted a

novel situation, unknown to England—that of the quasi-

sovereign Indian tribes—they turned to the principles of

the common law. Did the tribes truly govern their people?

Or were their people wholly subsumed within the United

States? Echoing Coke and Blackstone, Chancellor Kent an-

swered with the common law. “We have purchased the

greater part of their lands, destroyed their hunting

grounds, . . . and gradually abridged their native independ-

ence,” Kent acknowledged. Goodell v. Jackson ex dem.

Smith, 20 Johns. 693, 711 (N. Y. Ct. Corr. Errors 1823).

Even so, he reasoned, the “United States ha[s] never dealt

with those people, within our national limits, as if they were

extinguished sovereignties.” Id., at 714. They were instead

“dependent nations” that maintained “dominion[s]” of their

own. Id., at 712, 714. Indians born under those dominions,

he concluded, were not “citizens or subjects of the United

States,” but members of “alien and sovereign tribes.” Id., at

715. Others followed Kent’s lead, see J. Kettner, The De-

velopment of American Citizenship, 1608–1870, pp. 294–

296 (1978) (Kettner), all the while emphasizing that the

“very few exceptions” to the sovereign’s power were narrow

indeed, H. Binney, Alienigenae of the United States 16 (2d

ed. 1853) (Binney).

In a Nation of immigrants—an “asylum for mankind,” in

Thomas Paine’s words—jus soli’s broad scope took on par-

ticular importance. Common Sense (1776), in 1 Writings of

Thomas Paine 101 (M. Conway ed. 1894). The young Re-

public attracted tens of thousands of émigrés from the Old

World—Scotch-Irish, French, German, Welsh, and many

more, some of whom hoped to stay only a short time, others

of whom hoped never to leave. See M. Jones, American Im-

migration 64–91 (1960). No matter their intentions,6 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

however, they could be assured that their children would be

American citizens by birth alone. As Justice Story said,

“[n]othing is better settled.” Inglis, 3 Pet., at 164 (opinion

concurring in part and dissenting in part). The very first

American legal treatise agreed. See 1 Z. Swift, A System of

the Laws of the State of Connecticut 164, 167 (1795) (“chil-

dren of aliens” are citizens, for they owe a “duty” at birth to

the “government, under whose protection [they] came into

existence”). As did the antebellum era’s foremost case on

the topic, Lynch v. Clarke, 1 Sand. Ch. 583 (N. Y. Ch. 1844).

Lynch reiterated that “the common law rule was the law of

the land” for the children of “citizens” and “foreigners”

alike—including those foreigners here merely on a “tempo-

rary sojourn.” Id., at 638, 663–664. The promise of Ameri-

can citizenship, Lynch declared, extends to “all persons

born within the jurisdiction of the United States.” Id., at

668 (internal quotation marks omitted).

B

The common law “made no distinction on account of race

or color.” United States v. Rhodes, 27 F. Cas. 785, 789 (No.

16,151) (CC Ky. 1866) (Swayne, J.). But the slave States

did. As the Civil War approached, more and more Southern

States sought to deny citizenship to black Americans—and

openly rejected the common law to reach that result. See

Kettner 320–324. It was “not the place of a man’s birth”

that made him a citizen, these States said, “but the rights

and privileges he may be entitled to enjoy.” Amy v. Smith,

11 Ky. 326, 332 (1822). On that view, “[t]he prejudice . . . of

caste” was “unconquerable.” Bryan v. Walton, 14 Ga. 185,

202 (1853). Not even emancipation could “confer citizen-

ship,” these States held, because free African Americans

still suffered from “social and civil degradation” based on

“the taint of blood.” Id., at 198. With the common law aban-

doned, almost 500,000 free black Americans in the South

were left little more than “strangers.” African MethodistCite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

7

Opinion of the Court

Episcopal Church v. New Orleans, 15 La. 441, 443 (1860);

see I. Berlin, Slaves Without Masters 136–137 (1974).

In the odious decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, this

Court imposed the Southern States’ beliefs onto the Nation.

19 How. 393. Chief Justice Taney, writing for the Court,

concluded that “the words ‘people of the United States’ and

‘citizen[s]’” had an unexpressed (and atextual) racial com-

ponent—one that excluded all those descended from slaves.

Id., at 419. Even if Massachusetts or Connecticut chose to

grant citizenship to the freedmen, they still could not par-

ticipate in national affairs. See id., at 422–423. They were

“born in the country,” Chief Justice Taney acknowledged,

and thus “did owe allegiance to the Government”—the pre-

cise criteria for citizenship at common law. Id., at 420. But

they were “not included, and were not intended to be in-

cluded, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution.” Id.,

at 404. For them, blood, not soil, was made the rule.

Dred Scott was met with shock. Ever since “the Declara-

tion of Independence,” Justice Curtis wrote, “the received

general doctrine has been, in conformity with the common

law”—that all “free persons born within” a State are “citi-

zens of the United States.” Id., at 576–577 (dissenting opin-

ion). Justice McLean said much the same. “Being born un-

der our Constitution and laws,” he explained, “make[s] him

a citizen.” Id., at 531 (dissenting opinion). Northern news-

papers condemned Dred Scott as “a wicked and false judg-

ment,” “an atrocious doctrine,” “a deliberate iniquity,” and

a “willful perversion.” D. Potter, The Impending Crisis,

1848–1861, p. 281 (1976). The decision was, in Lincoln’s fa-

mous words, an “astonisher in legal history.” 3 Writings of

Abraham Lincoln 55 (A. Lapsley ed. 1905).

Abolitionists swore to undo what the Court had done. “By

birth,” Frederick Douglass insisted, “we are American citi-

zens.” 2 Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass 259 (P.

Foner ed. 1950). “The Constitution knows all the human

inhabitants of this country as ‘the people,’” he explained, no8 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

matter their “color, class, or clime.” Id., at 415, 424. “[A]ll

I ask of the American people is, that they live up to the Con-

stitution, adopt its principles, imbibe its spirit, and enforce

its provisions.” Id., at 424. “When this is done,” Douglass

predicted, “the glorious birthright of our common human-

ity” will once again “become the inheritance of all the in-

habitants of this highly favored country.” Ibid.

C

The Court had overruled the common law, but the peo-

ple—eventually—would overrule the Court. It took more

than a decade—and the addition of names such as Antie-

tam, Gettysburg, and Chancellorsville to our national

canon—but Douglass’s vision of “our common humanity”

would be fulfilled.

The Reconstruction Congress did not start from scratch.

In the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln’s Attorney

General, Edward Bates, had issued a landmark opinion

that sought to displace Dred Scott in favor of the common

law. Citing the key authorities (among them Calvin’s Case

and Kent’s Commentaries), Bates rejected the premise that

“citizenship is ever hereditary.” 10 Op. Atty. Gen. 382, 399

(1862). “[E]very person born in the country,” he wrote, “is,

at the moment of birth, prima facie a citizen . . . without

any reference to race or color, or any other accidental cir-

cumstances.” Id., at 394. He acknowledged that there were

some limits—hence “prima facie,” not “conclusive.” See id.,

at 394, 396–397. But those exceptions were “few,” simply

“the small and admitted class of the natural-born composed

of the children of foreign ministers and the like.” Id., at

397. To Bates, it was soil—not blood—that “furnishes the

rule, both of duty and of right.” Id., at 394; see also 10 Op.

Atty. Gen. 328, 328–329 (1862) (referring to Lynch for its

“full and clear statement” of the common law).

A year after General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox,

Congress sought to turn Bates’s opinion into law. TheCite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

9

Opinion of the Court

result was the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Act declared

that “all persons born in the United States and not subject

to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are

hereby . . . citizens of the United States.” §1, 14 Stat. 27.

To the Reconstruction Congress, the Act was simply as-

sumed to invoke the common law rule—as Bates had in his

“ablest and most exhaustive opinion,” Cong. Globe, 39th

Cong., 1st Sess., 1116 (1866) (Rep. Wilson), and as the New

York Court of Chancery had “[i]n the great case of Lynch vs.

Clarke,” id., at 1832 (Rep. Lawrence). Indeed, the bill’s

sponsor, Senator Lyman Trumbull, enthusiastically agreed

with the bill’s critics that it would make citizens of “the chil-

dren of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country.” Id., at

498. “[E]ven the infant child of a foreigner born in this land

is a citizen” under this bill, Trumbull declared. Id., at 1757.

The specter of Dred Scott, however, loomed over Con-

gress’s efforts. Opponents of the Act contended that Con-

gress could not grant such expansive citizenship (and set

aside this Court’s precedent) by statute alone. See, e.g.,

Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 497–498 (Sen. Van

Winkle); id., at 499 (Sen. Cowan). To quiet those con-

cerns—and to permanently enshrine the common law in the

Constitution—Congress turned to the Fourteenth Amend-

ment.

III

A

What the Civil Rights Act began, the Fourteenth Amend-

ment would finish. Like the Act, the Fourteenth Amend-

ment was intended to repudiate Dred Scott. This time, how-

ever, the goal was even grander—to put the “great question

of citizenship” “beyond the legislative power” altogether, to

settle the issue once and for all. Cong. Globe, 39th Cong.,

1st Sess., at 2891, 2896 (Sen. Howard).

The Fourteenth Amendment achieved its aim. The Citi-

zenship Clause mirrored the common law’s criteria for10 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

citizenship. The Clause starts, like the common law, with

territory—a child must be “born . . . in the United States,”

not elsewhere (even to American parents). And the Clause

ends, again like the common law, with sovereign power—a

child must be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United

States, unlike (say) the families of foreign ministers. A

child born on American soil and subject to American law

was made an American citizen.

Even the language of the Clause is that of the common

law. Lynch held that American citizenship extended to “all

persons born within the jurisdiction of the United States.”

1 Sand. Ch., at 668. So did Chancellor Kent. See Kent 38,

and n. a (“all persons born within the jurisdiction and alle-

giance of the United states” are citizens). So did the first

legal treatise on the rights of free black Americans. See

Yates 36 (all “who are born within the jurisdiction of a

State” are citizens). And so did the famed antebellum law-

yer Horace Binney. See Binney 20 (children “born within

the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States”

are citizens). Little wonder, then, that the Citizenship

Clause’s principal author would explain that its language

was “simply declaratory of . . . the law of the land already.”

Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 2890 (Sen. Howard).

That law was clear. Any child who was born “under the

protection of ” the United States—that is, any child for

whom no extraterritorial fiction applied—was made a citi-

zen, for he owed a natural “allegiance” (and thus “obedi-

ence”) to the Nation. Lynch, 1 Sand. Ch., at 668; see Cong.

Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 570 (Sen. Morrill) (the “es-

sential elements of citizenship” are “allegiance on the one

side and protection on the other”).

B

Even putting the common law to one side, the Citizenship

Clause’s key phrase—“subject to the jurisdiction”—requires

the same result. The word “jurisdiction” was hardlyCite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

11

Opinion of the Court

unknown to the drafters and ratifiers of the Fourteenth

Amendment. Congress chose to use an established legal

term and the Clause must be interpreted in that light.

In 1868, as today, “jurisdiction” (in the context of a sover-

eign) refers to the “[p]ower of governing or legislating.” N.

Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language

732 (C. Goodrich & N. Porter eds. 1865); see also, e.g., 1 B.

Abbott, Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American

or English Jurisprudence 671 (1879) (“The authority of gov-

ernment; the sway of a sovereign power”). To be “subject

to” the jurisdiction of the United States, then, is to “liv[e]

under” its “dominion,” J. Worcester, Dictionary of the Eng-

lish Language 1435 (1860), a meaning reinforced by the

Clause’s territorial focus on those born “in” the United

States. The Citizenship Clause uses jurisdiction in its ordi-

nary sense—referring to the power of the United States to

govern those within its territory.

The scope of that power was well settled in 1868, largely

by “the celebrated case” of Schooner Exchange v. McFad-

don, 7 Cranch 116. See H. Wheaton, Elements of Interna-

tional Law §96, p. 154 (8th ed. 1866). Expounding on “gen-

eral principles,” Chief Justice Marshall explained that

“jurisdiction” referred to “the full and complete power of a

nation within its own territories.” 7 Cranch, at 136. That

“absolute” power was “susceptible of no limitation not im-

posed” by the nation itself. Ibid. All sovereigns, however,

were understood to have impliedly waived their jurisdiction

in “certain peculiar circumstances”—in essence, where ex-

ercising jurisdiction would “degrade the dignity” of “foreign

sovereigns.” Id., at 136–137. As in the context of jus soli,

those peculiar circumstances arose most frequently in the

case of “foreign ministers.” See id., at 138–139. “[E]very

sovereign would hazard his own dignity,” after all, if his of-

ficials abroad were made to “owe temporary and local alle-

giance to a foreign prince.” Id., at 139.12 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

The limits of that exception were carefully defined. Still

within the United States’ power were the “private individ-

uals” of a foreign nation who had “spread themselves

through [our territory] as business or caprice may direct.”

Id., at 144. “[I]t would be obviously inconvenient and dan-

gerous to society, and would subject the laws to continual

infraction,” Chief Justice Marshall explained, “if such indi-

viduals or merchants . . . were not amenable to the jurisdic-

tion of the country.” Ibid. “Nor can the foreign sovereign

have any motive for wishing such exemption,” he continued,

with respect to its sojourning subjects who were “not em-

ployed by” the sovereign or “engaged in national pursuits.”

Ibid. Just like jus soli, a sovereign’s jurisdiction made no

exception for those only temporarily present within the sov-

ereign’s territory. Instead, nearly everyone within the ter-

ritorial boundaries of the United States was “amenable to”

the Nation’s jurisdiction. Ibid.

The ordinary legal meaning of the text of the Clause thus

neatly captures the common law rule, with its broad reach

and narrow exceptions. The same groups included (and ex-

cluded) by jus soli were included (and excluded) by the con-

ventional understanding of jurisdiction. Excluded by both

were the children of foreign ministers and members of 19th-

century Indian tribes over whom the United States had

ceded a part of its territorial jurisdiction to preserve its re-

lationship with a foreign sovereign (or quasi-sovereign).

No such intersovereign concerns apply to children born of

parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United

States; no foreign sovereign would “have any motive for

wishing” them outside this Nation’s authority. Ibid. Those

children are thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United

States. They satisfy both elements of the Citizenship

Clause: they are “born . . . in the United States” and “sub-

ject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Under the Constitution,

they are citizens at birth.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

13

Opinion of the Court

IV

Our precedent—the seminal case of United States v.

Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649 (1898)—confirms this rule.

A

For nearly two decades after the Fourteenth Amend-

ment’s ratification, the Executive Branch viewed the Citi-

zenship Clause as “simply an affirmance of the common law

of England and of this country.” Memorandum of Secretary

of State H. Fish to Mr. Marsh (May 19, 1871), in 2 Digest of

the International Law of the United States §183, p. 394 (F.

Wharton ed. 2d ed. 1887) (Digest). Under that view, “the

status of citizenship” was “fixed by the place of nativity, ir-

respective of parentage”—with the limited exception of “the

children of foreign ministers, and of other persons who may

be within our territory with rights of extraterritoriality.”

Ibid.

In 1872, for instance, Attorney General George Williams

was called upon to determine the citizenship of a child born

of Austrian parents only “temporarily residing” in New

York City. 14 Op. Atty. Gen. 154. Citing the Citizenship

Clause (and Bates’s 1862 opinion), Williams explained that

“a person born in this country, though of alien parents who

have never been naturalized, is, under our law, deemed a

citizen of the United States by reason of the place of his

birth.” Id., at 155. Thus the child “is a native of this coun-

try,” Williams concluded, “and as such was originally

clothed with American nationality.” Ibid. Secretary of

State Hamilton Fish agreed. See Memorandum to Baron

Lederer (Dec. 24, 1872), in 2 Digest 395–396. So did federal

courts. Like the Executive Branch, they saw the Clause as

merely “declaratory of the rule of the common law.” McKay

v. Campbell, 16 F. Cas. 161, 165 (No. 8,840) (DC Ore. 1871);

see also In re Look Tin Sing, 21 F. 905, 908–910 (CC Cal.

1884) (Field, J.); Ex parte Chin King, 35 F. 354, 355–356

(CC Ore. 1888).14 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

As the era of Reconstruction faded, however, so too did

the promise of birthright citizenship. Uncertainty came

with the first Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, ch. 126, 22

Stat. 58, and the election of President Cleveland, the first

Democrat to hold the office since the Civil War. See F.

Douglass, Speech (Apr. 16, 1885), in 4 Life and Writings of

Frederick Douglass 413 (1955). It was around this time

that the State Department began to deny citizenship to

those with “dual or doubtful allegiance,” 2 Digest 402; and

it was around this time that several scholars proposed a

new theory of the Clause, one based on “international law,”

F. Wharton, Conflict of Laws §10, p. 35 (2d ed. 1881) (Whar-

ton).

This new theory focused on the parents’ status, not the

child’s. It was only if a child’s parents were “domiciled in

the United States,” they argued, that the child was “inter-

nationally subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,”

as the Citizenship Clause (they said) required. Id., §12, at

41–42 (emphasis added); see also A. Morse, A Treatise on

Citizenship 248 (1881). These writers acknowledged that

the common law took a different view, see id., at 238, and

n. 1, and acknowledged “that the language of the [F]our-

teenth [A]mendment . . . is very broad,” A. Morse, Citizen-

ship of Children of Aliens Born in the United States, 30 Al-

bany L. J. 420 (1884). But they insisted that jus soli had

been “universally” rejected by other nations and had not

been made part of the Constitution. Ibid.

B

In Wong Kim Ark, this Court rejected that view, conclud-

ing that no “rule of international law” had qualified “the

ancient rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion.”

169 U. S., at 667.

At issue was the citizenship of Wong Kim Ark, born in

San Francisco to Chinese parents. See id., at 652. In

Wong’s telling, the case was not close. “[T]here can be noCite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

15

Opinion of the Court

just doubt,” he argued, “that the Amendment was intended

to be based upon the doctrine derived from the common law,

that the character of a natural born citizen is incidental to

birth only.” Brief for Appellee in United States v. Wong Kim

Ark, O. T. 1896, No. 132, p. 78 (filed by Counselor Ashton);

see also id., at 38 (discussing “the celebrated case of Lynch

vs. Clark”). The Government disagreed. It admitted that

“the opinions of the Attorneys-General, the decisions of the

Federal and State courts, and, up to 1885, the rulings of the

State Department all concurred in the view that birth in

the United States conferred citizenship,” based on “the com-

mon law doctrine of allegiance” and “the authority of the

decision of Chancellor Sandford in Lynch v. Clarke.” Brief

for United States in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, O. T.

1896, No. 132, p. 28. But the Executive no longer endorsed

that view. “[T]he common-law doctrine of England,” it ar-

gued, had in fact never been “the doctrine of the United

States,” and was not made the law by virtue of the Citizen-

ship Clause. Id., at 6.

In an opinion by Justice Gray, the Court rejected the Gov-

ernment’s position. Justice Gray explained that the Four-

teenth Amendment was merely “declaratory” of the “funda-

mental rule of citizenship by birth” that prevailed at

common law. 169 U. S., at 688. That “same rule,” he wrote,

“was in force in all the English Colonies”—“and continued

to prevail under the Constitution.” Id., at 658. And its con-

tours were clear. It excluded those recognized as exempt

“from the jurisdiction of this country”—the “children of am-

bassadors” and other representatives of foreign sovereigns,

as well as those born in the “alien nations” of Indian tribes.

Id., at 675, 681–683, 693.

All others were citizens at birth, whether born to perma-

nent residents or temporary visitors. See id., at 676, 687–

688. Indeed, Justice Gray noted, no one had even “con-

tested” this conclusion for “more than fifty years after the

adoption of the Constitution”—until the matter was16 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

“elaborately argued” before the New York Court of Chan-

cery in Lynch v. Clarke. 169 U. S., at 664. And there the

question was “decided upon full consideration by Vice

Chancellor Sandford in favor of their citizenship.” Ibid.

“The same doctrine was repeatedly affirmed in the execu-

tive departments,” Justice Gray wrote, not to mention by

Kent and Binney—each of whom affirmed that “[t]he child

of an alien, if born in the country, is as much a citizen as

the natural-born child of a citizen.” Id., at 664–665. In

adopting the common law, Justice Gray explained, the Cit-

izenship Clause adopted this same rule. See id., at 676.

Justice Gray then turned to Schooner Exchange to con-

firm what the common law made clear. “The words . . . ‘sub-

ject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” he wrote, “must be pre-

sumed to have been understood and intended by the

Congress . . . in the same sense in which the like words had

been used by Chief Justice Marshall in the well known case

of The Exchange.” 169 U. S., at 687. On that understand-

ing, aliens who traveled to the United States for “business

or pleasure” received no “exemption from the jurisdiction of

the country.” Id., at 686. To the contrary, they were subject

to that jurisdiction for as long as they remained here—and

any children born to them were American citizens under

the Fourteenth Amendment. See id., at 682–688.

What the Court held in Wong Kim Ark was simple: the

Citizenship Clause incorporated the common law and

granted citizenship to nearly all children born in the United

States. Not surprisingly, then, in the 128 years since, we

have repeatedly understood the rule of Wong Kim Ark to

guarantee citizenship to all children born in the United

States and subject to its power. See, e.g., United States ex

rel. Hintopoulos v. Shaughnessy, 353 U. S. 72, 73 (1957);

INS v. Rios-Pineda, 471 U. S. 444, 446 (1985). We see no

reason to depart from that view today.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

17

Opinion of the Court

V

The Government and the principal dissent share many of

our premises. They agree that the Citizenship Clause was

intended to incorporate the “background principles” of the

common law. Brief for Petitioners 15–16; see, e.g., post, at

2–3, 86 (THOMAS, J., dissenting). They agree that, under

the common law, “citizenship turns on allegiance.” Brief for

Petitioners 40; see, e.g., post, at 1, 17–18 (THOMAS, J., dis-

senting). And they agree that “Dred Scott departed from

that traditional, allegiance-based view of citizenship”—a

departure that Congress “repudiated” in the Clause. Brief

for Petitioners 16–17; see, e.g., post, at 1–2, 26–27 (THOMAS,

J., dissenting).

Where the Government and the principal dissent err is

with their definition of “allegiance.” They concede that Cal-

vin’s Case and Blackstone state the rule that prevailed be-

fore the Declaration of Independence—that a natural “alle-

giance” arises for all children who are “born here . . . under

the protection of the sovereign.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 64–65, 136;

see post, at 75–76 (THOMAS, J., dissenting). Yet according

to the Government and the principal dissent, “the United

States’ conception of allegiance”—at some unspecified point

in time—broke “from Great Britain’s.” Brief for Petitioners

16. (The Government has variously dated this change to

the late-18th century, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 137, the early-

19th century, see id., at 26, 76, and the Reconstruction era,

see id., at 3; the principal dissent declines to offer a date.)

Natural allegiance, they contend, was no longer sufficient

for citizenship; some greater quantum of allegiance was re-

quired.

How much? The Government offers a smorgasbord of for-

mulations: “primary allegiance,” “sufficient allegiance,”

“full allegiance,” “requisite allegiance.” Brief for Petitioners

12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 29, 32, 42. (The principal dissent,

for its part, seems to have settled on “primary allegiance.”

Post, at 17, 22, 25, 29, 58.) What all these formulations18 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

supposedly share is that they turn on domicile—the place

of one’s permanent home. At some point before the ratifi-

cation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the argument goes, it

became “deeply rooted” in this country that “[d]omicile is

the key concept that creates allegiance.” Tr. of Oral Arg.

26.

The trouble is that there is scant evidence for this dra-

matically revisionist view. Certainly no one said that such

a change had occurred. Indeed, even as the antebellum

Americans hotly debated whether the Declaration of Inde-

pendence had abrogated one aspect of the British common

law—that natural allegiance was indefeasible, no matter a

person’s desire to expatriate—all agreed that such alle-

giance was owed in the first place. See Lynch, 1 Sand. Ch.,

at 657 (“perpetual allegiance . . . does not stand upon the

same reason or principle as the common law doctrine of al-

legiance by birth”); Murray v. Schooner Charming Betsy, 2

Cranch 64, 120 (1804) (noting unsettled question of

whether an American citizen “can divest himself absolutely

of ” his citizenship, but simply presuming that any “person

born within the United States” was a natural-born citizen).

The only evidence the Government and the principal dis-

sent can muster to show that some alternative (“primary”)

conception of allegiance displaced the common law is a “fu-

neral oration” for President Lincoln. Brief for Petitioners

23; see post, at 22–23. Ahistorical modifiers aside, the Gov-

ernment and the dissent identify no source that defined al-

legiance at birth as being based on domicile in the period

from 1776 to 1868.3 Sources from that period instead de-

fined “allegiance by birth” just as the British did—as “the

tie or duty” owed by one who is “born within the dominions

——————

3 The principal dissent comes closest with the decision of New York’s

intermediate appellate court in Ludlam v. Ludlam, 31 Barb. 486 (N. Y.

Gen. Term 1860). When New York’s highest court heard the case, how-

ever, it did not follow the lower court’s reasoning; it relied instead on

Lynch v. Clarke. See Ludlam v. Ludlam, 26 N. Y. 356, 376 (1863).Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

19

Opinion of the Court

and under the protection of a particular sovereign.” Inglis,

3 Pet., at 155 (opinion of Story, J.); see also, e.g., 1 N. Web-

ster, An American Dictionary of the English Language

(1828) (“[e]very native” owes a “natural or implied alle-

giance” “to the government under which he is born”).

Of course, some wished to change the rule. But even

those who wished to limit jus soli did not deny that children

born of temporary visitors owed natural allegiance to the

United States. They instead thought that domicile might

serve as a “reasonable qualification” to the common law

rule (namely, that citizenship derives solely from the

“[n]atural allegiance” owed “to the government of the terri-

tory of a man’s birth”). J. Story, Commentaries on the Con-

flict of Laws §§21, 48, pp. 22, 48 (1834) (Story).

The principal dissent (but not the Government) at times

seems to directly equate domicile and national citizenship.

See post, at 9–10, 12–14, 40–41. That is wrong. “It is, in

fact, a general axiom of international law, that there may

be domicil where there is no nationality, and nationality

where there is no domicil.” F. Wharton, Conflict of Laws

§40a, p. 47 (1872); see also A. Cockburn, Nationality 204

(1869). After all, one who establishes a domicile in a new

country does not automatically become a citizen thereof.

(He has to be naturalized.) Nor does he automatically lose

his prior citizenship. (He has to expatriate.) Thus, the prin-

cipal dissent ultimately acknowledges that domicile alone

was insufficient to make someone “formally” a “citizen.”

Post, at 9.

Of course, domicile was relevant to naturalization and ex-

patriation. But that by no means suggests it was a prereq-

uisite to national citizenship at birth. The principal dis-

sent’s reliance on cases concerning changes to a person’s

state citizenship is thus misplaced. See, e.g., post, at 6–7.

And the Government’s remaining support for the idea that

a domicile “qualification” to birthright citizenship was

“widely accepted” in the United States before the Civil War,20 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

Brief for Petitioners 22, consists of a single state-court case

about citizenship in the Republic of Texas, a proposed (but

never adopted) model code for the State of New York, and

another treatise that discussed the subject only in terms of

“the principles of natural reason,” which it expressly distin-

guished from “[t]he common law,” 1 H. Tucker, Commen-

taries on the Laws of Virginia 57–58 (1836).

The congressional debates over the Civil Rights Act of

1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment confirm our view.

The principal dissent (and the Government) lean heavily on

a handful of ambiguous floor statements referencing “tem-

porary sojourners” and “foreigners.” See, e.g., Cong. Globe,

39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 1117 (Rep. Wilson) (“it may be that

children born on our soil to temporary sojourners” do not

fall within the Act’s scope (emphasis added)); id., at 2890

(Sen. Howard) (the Citizenship Clause “w[ould] not, of

course, include persons born in the United States who are

foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of embassa-

dors or foreign ministers”). Far more frequent and explicit,

however, were statements embracing the common law. See,

e.g., id., at 498 (Sen. Trumbull); id., at 570 (Sen. Morrill);

id., at 1124 (Rep. Cook); id., at 1832 (Rep. Lawrence); id.,

at 2768 (Sen. Wade); id., at 2891 (Sen. Conness); id., at 3032

(Sen. Henderson). And the debates make clear that no

member of Congress seriously grappled with a domicile-

based carveout to the “fixed, certain, and intelligible rule[]”

of the common law. Lynch, 1 Sand. Ch., at 658.

For a Congress intent on putting the question of citizen-

ship “once and forever [to] rest,” Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st

Sess. 575 (1871) (Sen. Trumbull), a domicile-based qualifi-

cation would have introduced significant uncertainty. Un-

like the easy-to-apply common law, it would be “difficult, if

not impossible, to lay down any general rule” of domicile-

based citizenship, as domicile “often depend[s] upon the cir-

cumstances of each case, the combinations of which areCite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

21

Opinion of the Court

infinite.” Inhabitants of Abington v. Inhabitants of North

Bridgewater, 40 Mass. 170, 177 (1839).

If Congress intended to hinge citizenship on each individ-

ual’s domicile—a question that “is sometimes a matter of

great difficulty to decide,” Story §45, at 43—it is reasonable

to expect there would have been at least some discussion of

the topic. Yet the word “domicile” appears just twice in the

discussion of the relevant provision of the Civil Rights Act.

See Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 1160 (Rep. Shel-

labarger); id., at 1117 (Rep. Wilson). And it appears in only

one speech from the Citizenship Clause debates—as part of

an explanation of why State citizenship is distinct from na-

tional citizenship under the Constitution. See id., at 3031–

3032 (Sen. Henderson).

Perhaps recognizing the absence of ratification-era sup-

port for a domicile-based rule of national citizenship, the

Government and principal dissent both emphasize sources

from after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

They turn to the same international law treatises that un-

derpinned the Government’s attempts to limit birthright

citizenship in the 1880s.4 This fundamentally revisionist

scholarship—and the post-1884 Executive Branch actions

that relied upon it—do not put in doubt the understanding

of the Citizenship Clause at the time of (and after) its rati-

fication. As Senator Trumbull explained in 1871, the

——————

4 The principal dissent suggests that any scholar who wanted “to pre-

vent the children of Chinese immigrants from being citizens . . . would

not have proposed a domicile requirement,” because “many Chinese im-

migrants were already domiciled here.” Post, at 72. But several of the

scholars upon which the dissent relies (most prominently Francis Whar-

ton) did not agree. In their view, Chinese children born in America were

“not citizens” because the Chinese—“as a population”—could not be

“domiciled in the United States.” Wharton §12, at 41–42. Indeed, the

Government made the same argument in United States v. Wong Kim Ark,

169 U. S. 649 (1898). See Brief for United States in United States v.

Wong Kim Ark, O. T. 1896, No. 132, p. 26 (asserting that “all Chinese

persons, as a rule, are but temporary residents of this country”).22 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

Citizenship Clause recognized that “[e]very person born

within the jurisdiction” of the Nation was “a citizen of the

United States,” as had been true under “the common law of

this country as well as of England.” Cong. Globe, 1st Sess.,

42d Cong., at 575; see also, e.g., Memorandum of Secretary

of State H. Fish (1871), in 2 Digest 394; In re Look Tin Sing,

21 F., at 906, 909–910.

In any case, postenactment history cannot override the

text. If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to

the children of those domiciled in the United States, noth-

ing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause con-

veyed that design. Words appearing frequently in the Ex-

ecutive Order—“mother,” “father,” “lawful,” “temporary”—

are absent from the Clause. For a simple reason: they did

not matter. And while the Clause does ensure state citizen-

ship attaches for U. S. citizens in “the State wherein they

reside,” Amdt. 14, §1, the explicit invocation of residence for

state citizenship only highlights its absence from the crite-

ria for U. S. citizenship. See Slaughter-House Cases, 16

Wall. 36, 74 (1873) (a person can “be a citizen of the United

States without being a citizen of a State”).

When the principal dissent does grapple with the opera-

tive legal text—“subject to the jurisdiction” of the United

States—it has little to say. It argues only that a person is

“subject to the jurisdiction of the government of his domi-

cile.” Post, at 3. But that is not the question. The question

is whether a person is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the

government of the country in which he is physically pre-

sent, even if he is only there temporarily. He is (unless he

falls under one of the familiar exceptions, such as for am-

bassadors). For the reasons given by Chief Justice Mar-

shall in Schooner Exchange, the United States exercisesCite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

23

Opinion of the Court

“full and complete power”—its “absolute and complete ju-

risdiction”—over temporary visitors. 7 Cranch 116, at 136.5

To avoid these problems, the principal dissent spends

much of its time on the text of the Civil Rights Act. See

post, at 2–4, 23–31, 35–36, 48–49, 59, 67–68, 87, 88–89.

(JUSTICE ALITO does the same—albeit in service of a differ-

ent result. See post, at 13–18, 20–21, 24–25, 36 (dissenting

opinion).) The Civil Rights Act made citizens of “all persons

born in the United States and not subject to any foreign

power.” 14 Stat. 27. The principal dissent contends that a

person is “not subject to any foreign power” if (and only if )

he is “domiciled in” the United States, for it is then (and

only then) that “his home nation” is forbidden from regulat-

ing his conduct. Post, at 3, 13–14. JUSTICE ALITO contends

that a person is “not subject to any foreign power” if (and

only if ) no other country would “automatically” make him

a “national[],” whether he is domiciled here or not. Post, at

37.

Neither theory works. As to the principal dissent, it is

simply not true that domicile in a new nation severs one’s

ties to the old one. See Story §540, at 451 (“Nations

——————

5 The Government briefly contends that Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U. S. 94

(1884) adopted its unconventional understanding of jurisdiction. That is

mistaken. Elk addressed the citizenship of a child “born a member of one

of the Indian tribes.” Id., at 99. And Elk hewed to the very same common

law rule announced by Chancellor Kent in 1823—indeed, it even cited

him. See id., at 100. The Court reasoned that tribal members were “no

more ‘born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof ’ ”

than “children born within the United States, of ambassadors or other

public ministers of foreign nations.” Id., at 102. In both contexts, after

all, the United States had voluntarily “cede[d] . . . a part of its territorial

jurisdiction” to another sovereign (or quasi-sovereign). Wong Kim Ark,

169 U. S., at 686. As the Court later confirmed, Elk “concerned only

members of Indian tribes within the United States.” Wong Kim Ark, 169

U. S., at 682. Beyond that unique intersovereign relationship, the

Court’s decision “had no tendency to deny citizenship to children born in

the United States of foreign parents . . . not in the diplomatic service of

a foreign country.” Ibid.24 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

generally assert a claim to regulate the rights, duties, obli-

gations, and acts of their own citizens, wherever they may

be domiciled.”). If the test truly is whether a person is

“amenable to the laws” of two governments at once, post, at

14 (THOMAS, J., dissenting), then it is a test that every child

born to a foreign parent fails—a result that even the prin-

cipal dissent cannot stomach. JUSTICE ALITO seems to rec-

ognize this bind, so he would create an ad hoc exception for

those whose parents have “done everything within their

power . . . to become Americans.” Post, at 27. He does not

explain how that exception can be squared with his view of

the text, which (to repeat) is that anyone “automatically”

made a “national[]” of his “parents’ native country” was not

entitled to citizenship under the Civil Rights Act.6 Post, at

37. In our estimation, the Act raises more questions than

answers—and was replaced by the Fourteenth Amend-

ment, which “better” expresses the views of the Reconstruc-

tion Congress anyway. Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.,

at 2894 (Sen. Trumbull). This Court said as much in Wong

Kim Ark. See 169 U. S., at 675, 688 (“any possible doubt”

about the meaning of the Civil Rights Act “was removed” by

the change to “the affirmative words” of the Citizenship

Clause).

For the dissents and the Government, Wong Kim Ark is

essentially irrelevant. They attempt to narrow that prece-

dent by noting that the Court’s opinion repeatedly referred

to the domicile of Wong’s parents. That is true. But “the

reasoning underlying” the holding of Wong Kim Ark cannot

——————

6 JUSTICE KAVANAUGH proposes a similar ad hoc exception to his own

interpretation of the Citizenship Clause. Under his rule, the Clause gen-

erally does not promise citizenship to children whose parents are “not

U. S. citizens.” See post, at 9 (opinion concurring in judgment and dis-

senting in part). Yet it must grant citizenship under the “facts and cir-

cumstances” presented in Wong Kim Ark—even though Wong’s parents

were not U. S. citizens. Post, at 5, n. 3. Like the exception proposed by

JUSTICE ALITO, JUSTICE KAVANAUGH’s exception is at war with his sup-

posedly “unifying” principle of the Clause. Post, at 9.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

25

Opinion of the Court

be squared with a domicile requirement of the sort the Gov-

ernment envisions. Bucklew v. Precythe, 587 U. S. 119, 136

(2019). As we have already explained, the Court exhaust-

ively canvassed the text and history of the Citizenship

Clause. It traced an unbroken line from the English com-

mon law, into the founding and antebellum eras, and

through the debates, to the Clause’s ratification. Yet at no

point did the Court identify any evidence in the historical

record that the ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment

thought themselves to be imposing a domicile limitation.

In the end, it is the dissent in Wong Kim Ark that makes

the strongest case for a domicile-based theory of American

citizenship. There, Chief Justice Fuller resisted the appli-

cation of the English common law rule because it “recog-

nized no exception in the instance of birth during the mere

temporary or accidental sojourn of the parents.” 169 U. S.,

at 718. He admitted that, in England, “the question of dom-

icil[e] is entirely distinct from that of allegiance” because

“[t]he one relates to the civil, and the other to the political,

status.” Ibid. But he believed that “a different view as to

the effect of permanent abode on nationality ha[d] been ex-

pressed in this country.” Ibid. Under this different view,

the Fourteenth Amendment “prevent[ed] the acquisition of

citizenship by” “the children of aliens, whose parents owed

local and temporary allegiance merely, remaining subject

to a foreign power.” Id., at 721. The Government and to-

day’s dissenters agree. But this view commanded only a

dissent in 1898, and neither time nor circumstance has

changed the fact that it is not the law.

* * *

Again and again, the dissents cast the common law as

“feudal,” “medieval”—a remnant of “the darkness of the

middle ages.” Post, at 4–5, 45, 54, 64, 75–78 (opinion of

THOMAS, J.); see post, at 1 (opinion of GORSUCH, J.); post, at

2, 4, 27 (opinion of ALITO, J.).26 TRUMP v. BARBARA

Opinion of the Court

That was not the view of the Reconstruction Congress.

Where the dissents see feudalism, the Framers of the Four-

teenth Amendment saw emancipation. By the time of the

Glorious Revolution in 1688, in fact, the tie created by birth

was less a “duty” than a “right”—the foundation of the “an-

cient liberties” of “free-born subjects.” H. Muller, Subjects

and Sovereign 16–18, 57–58 (2017). That is why Blackstone

described the “privileges” owed to the “natural-born.” 1

Blackstone 361–362. That is why the colonists demanded

the “rights of Englishmen” more than 250 years ago. B.

Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

192 (1967). And that is why abolitionists lauded the “an-

cient and universal” rule of citizenship by birth alone as “an

ordinance of Heaven.” Yates 36–37; see also M. Jones,

Birthright Citizens 89–107 (2018).

Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—

to freely participate in our political community. The Fram-

ers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to

“every free-born person in this land.” Cong. Globe, 39th

Cong., 1st Sess., at 600 (Sen. Trumbull). We keep that

promise today.

The judgment of the District Court for the District of New

Hampshire is affirmed.

It is so ordered.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

1

JACKSON, J., concurring

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 25–365

_________________

DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED

STATES, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. BARBARA, ET AL.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI BEFORE JUDGMENT TO THE UNITED

STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT

[June 30, 2026]

JUSTICE JACKSON, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR joins

as to the introduction and Part I, concurring.

I join the Court’s opinion in full. I write separately to

respond to some of the themes in the principal dissent. De-

spite his longstanding endorsement of a “colorblind” Con-

stitution, JUSTICE THOMAS now surprisingly suggests that

the Citizenship Clause was a race-conscious remedial

measure, relating only to “freed slaves such as Dred Scott,”

post, at 56, and those who shared with them certain char-

acteristics, post, at 1 (“no other homeland”); post, at 21

(“called America home”). It is for this reason, he says, that

“children who were born in the United States but [to par-

ents] not domiciled here” are not entitled to claim birthright

citizenship. Post, at 3–4. But that narrow vision of the

Fourteenth Amendment bears little relationship to the his-

tory of its ratification. Even worse, JUSTICE THOMAS’s tell-

ing elides the entire point of the Second Founding: The Re-

construction Amendments were an anticaste,

antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot

treatment for the dark stain of slavery.

I

It is common ground that the Fourteenth Amendment

was “enacted . . . with the one pervading purpose of secur-

ing equal citizenship for the freed slaves.” Post, at 902 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

(internal quotation marks omitted). Also true is the fact

that this Court “has time and again denied Americans that

promise.” Post, at 90.1 But consensus about the Fourteenth

Amendment’s central motivation does not justify JUSTICE

THOMAS’s myopic treatment of it. The Amendment caused

a paradigm shift in the trajectory of our Nation; the teacher

who scolds a student for bullying a classmate hopes the stu-

dent learns the broader lesson of treating everyone with

kindness, not just that one kid.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, those who championed

the Fourteenth Amendment—both within and beyond Con-

gress—understood the assignment. Their work product

used “language that transcended race and region,” and

thereby “changed and broadened the meaning of freedom

for all Americans.”2 Instead of the limited salve the princi-

pal dissent makes it out to be, the Citizenship Clause re-

flects this universalist approach.

A

Consider, first, the voices of those outside the chambers

of the Senate and the House of Representatives, whose ad-

vocacy and organizing culminated in the Fourteenth

——————

1 I suspect, though, that JUSTICE THOMAS and I disagree about when

and how that promise has been denied by this Court. My list is long (and

sadly only getting longer). For a sampling, consider: Civil Rights Cases,

109 U. S. 3 (1883); Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896); De Lima v.

Bidwell, 182 U. S. 1 (1901) (otherwise known as the Insular Cases);

Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244 (1901) (same); Korematsu v. United

States, 323 U. S. 214 (1944); Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717 (1974);

McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U. S. 279 (1987); Parents Involved in Commu-

nity Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U. S. 701 (2007); Shelby

County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529 (2013); Students for Fair Admissions,

Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U. S. 181 (2023)

(SFFA); Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U. S. ___ (2026).

2 E. Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863–

1877, pp. 257–258 (1988) (emphasis added).Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

3

JACKSON, J., concurring

Amendment.3 First in the North (as States abolished slav-

ery), and then in the South (after Emancipation and the

Union’s victory in the Civil War), Black people who were

generally not permitted at the polls or in the halls of power

mobilized nevertheless to advance the universalist vision of

belonging and citizenship that eventually won the day.

The odds were long and the stakes were high. Indeed,

around the time they gained their freedom, former slaves

faced a crisis similar in relevant respects to the American

immigrant experience. With little in terms of possessions

and even less in terms of opportunities to make a living for

themselves and their families, freed Blacks were not ush-

ered warmly into the broader community (with apologies or

compensation), set up for success, or even given the rights

and privileges others enjoyed. Though they’d tilled the soil

for centuries and had labored to build every building, once

freed, they were basically treated as “strangers” in a not-

so-strange land.4

This was not for lack of trying to survive and belong on

the freedmen’s part. They constructed churches, schools,

and mutual-aid societies—safe zones amidst America’s

racialized social and economic order.5 Outside those

enclaves, however, freed Blacks were characterized as

unassimilable and incapable of full civic participation.6

——————

3 Cf. Wolford v. Lopez, 609 U. S. ___, ___, n. 15 (2026) (JACKSON, J., dis-

senting) (slip op., at 28, n. 15) (explaining the importance of ensuring

that Black experiences and perspectives “are not (here again) excluded

from” our analysis of the relevant history).

4 African Methodist Episcopal Church v. City of New Orleans, 15 La.

Ann. 441, 443 (1860); see also ante, at 6–7 (majority opinion) (citing I.

Berlin, Slaves Without Masters 136–137 (1974)). Regarding freedmen in

the North prior to the Civil War, see also J. Horton & L. Horton, In Hope

of Liberty 125–176 (1997).

5 Ibid.

6 See D. Nieman, To Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen’s Bureau

and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865–1868, p. 72 (1979) (Nieman); see

also K. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction 1865-1877, p. 12 (1965)4 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

Their humanity was disregarded.7 Serious doubts about

their claims to citizenship were also being sown.8 The

reason was clear: “[A]n integrated, race-blind society under

the rubric of ‘all men are created equal’—required a societal

commitment to” antisubordination principles and practices,

i.e., “a well-resourced effort to undo the damage done to

black people by slavery.”9 But “even the most ardent

opponents of slavery recoiled” from that prospect.10

One solution that gained traction in the early 1800s was

to physically separate the freedmen and other Black people

from the general polity. Antislavery Northerners and pro-

slavery Southerners found common cause in the idea that

freed Blacks would surely “be happiest in a black-led repub-

lic, beyond the contempt of and competition with white

——————

(Stampp) (“In the nineteenth century most white Americans, North and

South, had reservations about the Negro’s potentialities—doubted that

he had the innate intellectual capacity and moral fiber of the white man

and assumed that after emancipation he would be relegated to an infe-

rior caste”).

7 See I. Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents 153 (2020)

(Wilkerson) (“The crimes of homicide, of rape, and of assault and battery

were felonies in the slavery era as they are today . . . [b]ut the country

allowed most any atrocity to be inflicted on the black body”); see also,

e.g., id., at 147–148 (describing Alabama surgeon James Marion Sims,

widely known as “the founding father of gynecology,” who pioneered pro-

cedures by operating on Black female slaves without anesthesia; Sims

said the surgery was “ ‘not painful enough to justify the trouble’ ”); see

generally D. Smith, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and

Exterminate Others 119 (2012) (“The dehumanization of African Ameri-

cans did not end with the creation of the new nation in 1776, or with the

abolition of slavery in 1865. Books and pamphlets published during the

latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continued to

assert that they were beasts”).

8 See O. Power-Greene, Against Wind and Tide: The African-American

Struggle Against the Colonization Movement 15–16 (2014).

9 See N. Guyatt, Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented

Racial Segregation 247 (2016) (Guyatt).

10 Ibid.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

5

JACKSON, J., concurring

Americans.”11 This vision of “paternal caste” prompted the

creation of the American Colonization Society, which estab-

lished the colony of Liberia and pushed for freed Blacks to

relocate there voluntarily.12 Once freed Blacks were out of

sight, they would (thankfully) be out of mind, eliminating

any need for a racial reckoning in America.

Meanwhile, many States pushed the envelope, passing

“Black Laws” (in the pre-War North) and “Black Codes” (in

the post-War South), intending to make it difficult for freed

Blacks to live and work there.13 Violence, too, played a sig-

nificant role in the isolation effort. Those who opposed abo-

lition banded together with those who resented the extra

competition in the job market to form marauding mobs,

——————

11 M. Jones, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Ante-

bellum America 37–38 (2018) (Jones); see also Guyatt 268–269.

By the middle of the century, colonization was so popular that it found

favor with leading abolitionists, including President Abraham Lincoln.

During an August 1862 meeting at the White House between Lincoln

and a “committee of free Negroes,” Lincoln described a fund Congress

had created “for the purpose of ‘colonizing people of African descent,’ a

cause he had long favored.” C. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie

Years and the War Years 316 (1954). The problem, as Lincoln described

it to his visitors, was that “ ‘[y]our race suffers very greatly, many of

them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence.’ ” Ibid.

He continued: “ ‘Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest

wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you

are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white

race.’ ” Ibid. Colonization would allow free Blacks to thrive, without

forcing Whites to accommodate their demands for equal treatment and

legal protection. Interestingly, Lincoln held a universalist view of

citizenship despite his support for the colonization movement. See infra,

at 10–11.

12 Jones 37; see also E. Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War

and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution 12 (2019) (Foner, The Sec-

ond Founding); Guyatt 267, 271–272.

13 For Black Laws, see, e.g., K. Masur, Until Justice Be Done 16–18,

230–231 (2021) (Masur); Foner, The Second Founding 13. For Black

Codes, see, e.g., id., 47–49; Nieman 72–76; Masur 309–310; Wolford, 609

U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 26–32) (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (discussing

Black Codes).6 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

ransacking Black neighborhoods, homes, and stores.14 And

local law enforcement? They did little to help. Before

Emancipation, per the federal Fugitive Slave Act, state of-

ficers pursued and arrested Blacks suspected of having es-

caped slavery. Afterwards, the cavalry looked the other

way when Black neighborhoods were terrorized by vigilante

violence.15 The Ku Klux Klan would form, and then flour-

ish, starting in 1866.16

——————

14 See D. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom 473 (2018)

(Blight); Jones 95, 105; K. Lewis, A Curse Upon the Nation: Race, Free-

dom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World 176, 182–

183 (2017). Frederick Douglass’s first-hand account from the Baltimore

of 1834 provides insight into White resentment over freed Blacks’ entry

into the labor market:

“The circumstance which led to [my being fired] was the committing of

an outrage upon me, by the white apprentices of the ship-yard. The fight

was a desperate one, and I came out of it shockingly mangled. I was cut

and bruised in sundry places, and my left eye was nearly knocked out of

its socket. The facts which led to this brutal outrage upon me illustrate

a phase of slavery which was destined to become an important element

in the overthrow of the slave system, and I may therefore state them with

some minuteness. That phase was this—the conflict of slavery with the

interests of white mechanics and laborers. In the country this conflict

was not so apparent; but in cities, such as Baltimore, Richmond, New

Orleans, Mobile, etc., it was seen pretty clearly. The slaveholders, with

a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the

poor laboring white man against the blacks, succeeded in making the

said white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself.” F.

Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass 223–224 (1892).

15 See Masur 234–235. The violence, of course, continued after the War

and during Reconstruction. The Colfax, Louisiana, massacre of 1873, for

example, was “[t]he bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Re-

construction era.” Foner, Reconstruction, at 437. Two hundred and

eighty Black people were ruthlessly slaughtered on Easter Sunday.

“[T]he Colfax massacre taught many lessons, including the lengths to

which some opponents of Reconstruction would go to regain their accus-

tomed authority.” Ibid.

16 Foner, Reconstruction, at 342, 428–429; see also id., at 430 (“[T]he

Klan aimed to regulate blacks’ ‘station in society’ ”).Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

7

JACKSON, J., concurring

Still, most freed Blacks resisted the pressure to self-

deport.17 Instead, many started organizing toward the

creation of the kind of Nation the colonizationists opposed—

one that guaranteed liberty and justice for all. In the

decades leading up to the ratification of the Fourteenth

Amendment, Black Americans organized and gathered at

more than 600 local and national conventions across the

country.18 There, delegates erected the political and

intellectual scaffolding for the Fourteenth Amendment and,

later, for the Black Civil Rights Movement more

generally.19

Critically for present purposes, these visionaries already

understood themselves to be American citizens. “The re-

frains ‘we are Americans’ and ‘we are citizens’ echoed in

conferences throughout the North.”20 Moreover, “[b]irth-

right figured importantly” as “delegates frequently charac-

terized their status as that of native-born citizens.”21 The

——————

17 See generally Brief for Historians Martha S. Jones et al. as Amici

Curiae 11–16.

18 See Colored Conventions Project, Conventions Records (Feb. 12,

2025), https://www.coloredconventions.org/about-records/ (archived at

https://perma.cc/3ZD2-3WHS) (collecting “minutes, proceedings, news-

paper articles, speeches, letters, transcripts, and images”); see also M.

Sinha, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruc-

tion, 1860–1920, p. 158 (2024); J. Fox, The Constitution of Black Aboli-

tionism: Reframing the Second Founding, 23 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 267,

272–334 (2021).

19 See E. Ball, Performing Politics, Creating Community: Antebellum

Black Conventions as Political Rituals in The Colored Conventions

Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (P. Foreman, J.

Casey & S. Patterson eds., 2021), pp. 155–157.

20 Jones 63; see also Address of the Colored National Convention to the

People of the United States, in Proceedings of the Colored National Con-

vention, Held in Rochester, July 6th, 7th, and 8th, 1853, p. 8 (“We ad-

dress you not as aliens nor as exiles, humbly asking to be permitted to

dwell among you in peace; but we address you as American citizens as-

serting their rights on their own native soil”).

21 Jones 63; see also Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored

Men, Held in the City of Syracuse, N. Y., Oct. 4, 5, 6, and 7, 1864, p. 428 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

delegates argued that, as such, they had the requisite alle-

giance, so, at a minimum, the Federal Government owed

them the duty of protection.22

The famed orator Frederick Douglass was one of these

delegates. Capturing the spirit of the moment, Douglass

proclaimed that Chief Justice Taney—the author of the ma-

jority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393

(1857)—“[could] do many things, but he [could not] . . .

change the essential nature of things.”23 In the absence of

the artificial evils of slavery and racial subordination,

Douglass explained, “the glorious birthright of our common

humanity, will become the inheritance of all the inhabit-

ants of this highly favored country.”24

Do note this: The citizenship thesis of the Colored Con-

ventions was thus not that some new status should be cre-

ated and conferred on freed Blacks. It was instead that

——————

(Syracuse Convention) (“[H]ere were we born, for this country our fathers

and brothers have fought, and here we hope to remain in full enjoyment

of enfranchised manhood, and its dignities”).

22 This was, of course, an invocation of the principle of “jus soli,” see

ante, at 4, which was well-known and widely accepted during this histor-

ical period. Delegates at the Colored Conventions drew upon its twin

duties—allegiance owed and protection given—to demand not only that

their rights as humans be honored, but also that “due attention should

be given to our needs.” Syracuse Convention 42. The delegates pointedly

observed that “[t]he laws which have made white men great, have de-

graded us, because we were colored, and because we were reduced to

chattel slavery.” Proceedings of the Colored People’s Convention of the

State of South Carolina, Held in Zion Church, Charleston, Nov. 1865, p.

23 (S. C. Convention). So, they argued, in slavery’s wake, the law needed

to make things right: It had to provide “[e]quality—expressed in such

language as equal liberty, equal justice, equal rights, and equal citizen-

ship.” Foner, The Second Founding, at 13; see also id., at 94 (“We claim

exactly the same rights, privileges, and immunities as are enjoyed by

white men—we ask nothing more, and will be content with nothing less”

(quoting The Colored Mass Convention held in Mobile (1867)).

23 Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (May 1857), in Two Speeches by

Frederick Douglass (1857) pp. 27–30, 31, 32–46.

24 Id., at 46.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

9

JACKSON, J., concurring

freed Blacks already had a rightful claim to citizenship be-

cause they had been born on American soil. After all, the

Nation, from its founding, had “boldly proclaim[ed] that all

men are born free and equal, and that consequently life, lib-

erty, and the pursuit of happiness, are inherent in every in-

dividual, vested inalienably by natural birthright.”25 No

ideal was more inherently American. Now, “rest[ing their]

cause on the republican standard of the revolutionary Fa-

thers,” freed Blacks were “knock[ing] at the doors of the

constitution and demand[ing] an entrance.”26 And “[i]f . . .

asked what evidence [they] bring to sustain [their] qualifi-

cations for citizenship, [they would] offer them certificates

of . . . BIRTH and NATIVITY.”27 Would the Nation live up

to its promise?

Such universalist appeals were a conscious choice. Yes,

Black Americans had suffered a singular wrong. And yes,

they had “‘fought and bled’” for the Union, paying a steep

price for their freedom.28 But the delegates did not rest on

these laurels. Rather, they drew upon the moral and polit-

ical force of the universal principles that were already core

to the Nation’s identity.

That bears repeating: Freed Blacks did not advocate for

a unique set of rules that catered only to their situation.

Nor did they seek to advance their own position relative to,

or at the expense and exclusion of, other marginalized

groups. Instead, those whose gatherings helped galvanize

——————

25 Minutes of the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State

of Michigan, Held in Detroit (Oct. 26–27, 1843), in 1 The Proceedings of

the Black State Conventions, 1840–1865 (P. Foner & G. Walker eds.,

1979), p. 192; see also Foner, The Second Founding, at 94 (“The former

slaves . . . self-consciously viewed themselves as individuals ‘newly in-

vested with all the rights of an American citizen.’ ”).

26 Minutes of the State Convention of the Coloured Citizens of Penn-

sylvania, Convened at Harrisburg (Dec. 13–14, 1848), p. 20.

27 Ibid.

28 Post, at 1 (THOMAS, J., dissenting) (quoting 2 Life and Writings of

Frederick Douglass 256 (P. Foner ed. 1950)).10 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

the push for full equality understood that “[a] diverse origin

does not disprove a common nature, nor does it disprove a

united destiny.”29 The firmest foundation for freedom

would require an anticaste reset—“both for his sake and for

ours”30—and would benefit all.

During his U. S. Senate candidacy, Abraham Lincoln de-

veloped a similar vision. In the lead-up to the now-famous

Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln explained that the prom-

ise of liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independ-

ence “was held sacred by all, and thought to include all.”31

Lincoln expressly and intentionally linked the fate of Black

Americans and immigrant groups (“among us perhaps half

our people who are not descendants at all” of the Founders),

and noted that the Nation’s future hinged on a universal

definition of citizenship that excluded neither.32 He ex-

plained that the Declaration’s promise that “all men are

created equal” was the “electric cord . . . that links the

hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together,” regard-

less of race or descent.33

The case was made. First, there was war. And then, the

delegates’ (and Lincoln’s) universalist view of citizenship

made its mark on the Constitution.

——————

29 F. Douglass, The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered: An

Address, Before the Literary Societies of Western Reserve College, July

12, 1854, p. 34.

30 F. Douglass, Composite Nation, Delivered in the Parker Fraternity

Course, Boston, 1867, p. 21 (1867); see also ibid. (“I want a home here

not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the

Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home

here. . . . Right wrongs no man”).

31 Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, Illinois (June 26, 1857), in

2 Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, p. 404 (1953).

32 Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Chicago, Illinois (July 10, 1858), in 2

id., at 499 (1953).

33 Id., at 500.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

11

JACKSON, J., concurring

B

The Civil Rights Act of 1866—the predecessor to the Cit-

izenship Clause, see ante, at 8–9—was initially drafted as

a spot treatment. Senator Lyman Trumbull’s first proposal

homed in on the freedmen and provided merely that “all

persons of African descent born in the United States are

hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”34 If

that language had prevailed, the view JUSTICE THOMAS as-

serts today might be well founded. See post, at 4–5 (finding

birthright citizenship’s “feudal” origins inconsistent with

Congress’s focus on “secur[ing] equal rights for the freed

blacks”).

But Senator Trumbull changed his mind. The day after

he submitted that first proposal, he requested to “withdraw

[the original] and . . . offer another in lieu of it to the same

purport, changing the phraseology.”35

Consistent with the views espoused by activists, Trum-

bull’s new proposal adopted a distinctly universalist regis-

ter: “All persons born in the United States, and not subject

to any foreign power, are hereby declared to be citizens of

the United States, without any distinction of color.”36 This

is the language Congress would eventually enact as part of

the Civil Rights Act of 1866. And the Civil Rights Act of

1866 would go on to become the basis for the Fourteenth

Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.

Senator Trumbull’s progression from specific to universal

was more than mere word choice. In the face of the virulent

anti-immigrant—and, in particular, the anti-Chinese and

the anti-Romani—sentiment of that era, language target-

ing just freed former slaves would have been the path of

least (or less) resistance. But Senator Trumbull, along with

those colleagues who took up the same mantle during the

——————

34 Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 474 (1866).

35 Id., at 498.

36 Ibid.12 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

ratification debates, expressly rejected that narrow fram-

ing.

Do not miss this context. Throughout the mid-19th cen-

tury, Chinese immigrants to America were often portrayed

as “‘coolies,’” a racist slur implying indentured servitude

and allegiance to a Chinese master.37 Some Members of

Congress brought that sentiment to the Civil Rights Act’s

citizenship-related debates. Notably focusing his attention

beyond freed former slaves, Senator Edgar Cowan, for ex-

ample, argued that German immigrants’ children born in

Pennsylvania should be citizens, but Chinese immigrants’

children should not—because Germans and Chinese were

different.38 In response, Senator Trumbull emphasized

that the law he had drafted drew no such distinctions.39

Undeterred, Senator Cowan would warn again—this

time during debates on the Fourteenth Amendment—that

the Citizenship Clause would let Chinese immigrants

“overrun” California and “double or treble the population”

of that State.40 Senator John Conness of California, where

anti-Chinese sentiment was arguably most pronounced, re-

sponded that “the children begotten of Chinese parents in

——————

37 J. Shugerman, An Originalist Case for Birthright Citizenship 77

U. C. L. J. (forthcoming 2026) (draft, at 3). When anti-Chinese sentiment

reached a fever pitch decades later, Congress enacted the Chinese Exclu-

sion Act and prohibited all Chinese immigration. See id., at 26. Justice

Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson—the “most celebrated Fourteenth

Amendment opinion” according the principal dissent, see post, at 37—

did not rise above such prejudice. Justice Harlan described Chinese im-

migrants as a “race so different from our own that we do not permit those

belonging to it to become citizens of the United States” and instead deem

them “absolutely excluded from our country.” 163 U. S., at 561 (dissent-

ing opinion). Justice Harlan thus drove a wedge between Black Ameri-

cans and other non-Black minorities.

38 Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 498 (“The children of German

parents are citizens; but Germans are not Chinese”).

39 Ibid.; see also ante, at 9.

40 Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 2891.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

13

JACKSON, J., concurring

California . . . shall be citizens.”41 In fact, he said, the Civil

Rights Act had already declared “that the children of all

parentage whatever . . . should be regarded and treated as

citizens of the United States.”42 No Senator rose to agree

with Senator Cowan or dispute what Senator Conness had

said.43 And no Senator said what the principal dissent says

today: that the text at issue conferred citizenship only on

freed Blacks and those in analogous situations.44

The debates went similarly with respect to the Roma peo-

ple, who were referred to at the time as “gypsies.”45 When

asked whether native-born Romani children would be birth-

right citizens of the United States under the proposed Civil

Rights Act, Senator Trumbull replied: “Undoubtedly.”46

President Andrew Johnson apparently agreed. In his mes-

sage vetoing the Act, Johnson noted with disapproval that,

under the law, “the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians

subject to taxation, the people called gypsies, as well as the

——————

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 See id., at 2891–2897.

44 See Shugerman, 77 U. C. L. J. (draft, at 26). In response to this his-

tory, the principal dissent notes that Francis Wharton, a late-1800s legal

scholar and State Department official, posited that because foreigners

“ ‘born in the United States’ of ‘parents not being here domiciled’ ” are not

subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, Chinese children born in

this country “ ‘are not citizens.’ ” Post, at 39 (quoting Conflict of Laws 41

(2d ed. 1881)). But JUSTICE THOMAS leaves out the motivation behind

Wharton’s contention: not the Constitution, but that the Chinese were

insufficiently “civiliz[ed]” and that “[t]o admit such rights to an emigrat-

ing nation, would be not merely to establish a foreign sovereign, but a

foreign barbarism, within our national domain.” Conflict of Laws 26

(1872).

45 William Blackstone called the Roma people “Egyptians” and branded

them “outlandish.” See 4 Commentaries on the Laws of England 165

(1770). (He did not exclude them from the common-law rule of birthright

citizenship, however. See id., at 166.) The proper term for this group

today is “Romani” or the “Roma people.” See Brief for Gerard N. Mag-

liocca as Amicus Curiae 1, n. 2.

46 Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 498.14 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

entire race designated as blacks,” would be birthright citi-

zens.47 Without making any changes to the bill or respond-

ing that Johnson was mistaken in his understanding of it

(or otherwise capitulating to Johnson’s views in any re-

spect), Congress overrode that presidential veto.48

During the ratification debates, Senator Cowan took aim

at the Roma people too, characterizing them as undeserving

of birthright citizenship because they “wander[ed] in

gangs,” “infest[ed] society,” and “impos[ed] upon the simple

and weak everywhere.”49 And again, Senator Conness dis-

missed Senator Cowan’s prejudices: “The only invasion of

Pennsylvania within my recollection was an invasion very

much worse and more disastrous to the State, and more to

be feared and more feared, than that of Gypsies. It was an

invasion of rebels [at Gettysburg].”50

When ratified, the Citizenship Clause thus vindicated the

universalist vision of the delegates at the Colored Conven-

tions and their allies in Congress. Far from the principal

dissent’s representations, freed Blacks did not receive citi-

zenship as a reward for their military service or for having,

through no choice of their own, “no other homeland [and] no

allegiance to any foreign power.” Post, at 1. Instead, the

Amendment recognized their rightful claim to birthright

citizenship simply and solely by virtue of their having been

born on American soil. John Bingham—one of the Amend-

ment’s principal architects—said this clearly: The “rights

——————

47 A. Johnson, Veto Message (Mar. 27, 1866), in 6 Compilation of the

Messages and Papers of the Presidents 405 (J. Richardson, ed. 1897); see

Foner, Reconstruction, at 247–248.

48 E. Maltz, Civil Rights, the Constitution, and Congress, 1863–1869,

p. 70 (1990).

49 Cong. Globe., 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 2891.

50 Id., at 2892.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

15

JACKSON, J., concurring

of citizenship” are universal because they are the “sacred

rights of person[hood].”51

With this recognition, the U. S. Constitution finally got

an anticaste engine. And with it, the Nation gained a new

font of legitimacy and vitality.

II

Fast forward 150 years, to 2026. Section One of the Four-

teenth Amendment still contains that same universalist

language, consistent with its origins and the ratifiers’ in-

tent. So, respondents say, our Constitution confers citizen-

ship upon almost anyone and everyone who is born on

American soil—to include the children of immigrants and

temporary sojourners not domiciled in the United States—

just as it did at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment’s

ratification.52

But the Government’s view (which the principal dissent

adopts) rejects this. Its argument focuses on the fact that

the Citizenship Clause had a particular purpose: to reverse

Dred Scott’s holding that Black Americans were not entitled

to citizenship. See Brief for Petitioners 13–14; post, at 1–2.

The reasoning is, in essence, that the Fourteenth Amend-

ment recognized freed Blacks as citizens because they had

“‘fought and bled’” in the Civil War, “had no other home-

land, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were

subject to no other authority.” Post, at 1; see also Brief for

Petitioners 16–18. Thus, the argument goes, the

——————

51 Id., at 1090. Bingham “believed the liberation of the slaves had

forced the United States to federalize the Bill of Rights and apply it to

all Americans.” Blight 479.

52 Brief for Respondents 7–23. At this point, the “almost” caveat per-

tains mainly to “the ‘children of ambassadors’ and other representatives

of foreign sovereigns.” Ante, at 15 (quoting United States v. Wong Kim

Ark, 169 U. S. 649, 675 (1898)). Congress addressed the founding-era

exclusion of “those born in the ‘alien nations’ of Indian tribes,” ante, at

15 (quoting Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S., at 681), in 1924, with its enactment

of the Indian Citizenship Act, ch. 233, 43 Stat. 253.16 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

Amendment’s guarantees are for only Black Americans and

those who fit their fought-and-bled-for-country, no-other-

homeland, domiciled mold. Post, at 1–3, 90.

That contention is ahistorical for the reasons laid out in

Part I, supra, and those explained in the Court’s opinion.

In my view, it is also difficult to square with the notion of a

“color-blind” Constitution, which has loomed large in the

Court’s Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence.53 The

Court’s conception of a color-blind Constitution and the

Government’s (and principal dissent’s) cramped, group-spe-

cific reading of the Citizenship Clause are two sides of the

same coin, stemming from a basic misunderstanding of the

——————

53 See Allen v. Milligan, 608 U. S. ___, ___, ___ (2026) (per curiam) (slip

op., at 1, 3) (concluding, in light of “our colorblind Constitution,” that it

is likely unconstitutional for States to be ordered to draw maps that pro-

vide fair electoral opportunities for Black Americans, no matter the race-

conscious, remedial origin of the Fourteenth Amendment that made the

Voting Rights Act possible); SFFA, 600 U. S., at 213 (declaring that race-

conscious university admissions programs that promote diversity violate

the Fourteenth Amendment); see also Parents Involved, 551 U. S., at

747–748 (plurality opinion) (rejecting efforts to defend race-conscious

public-school placements against claims of unconstitutional discrimina-

tion brought by White students).

There are myriad ways in which the Court’s adherence to color-blind-

ness is mistaken, some of which I have addressed in other opinions. See

SFFA, 600 U. S., at 385 (JACKSON, J., dissenting); see also, e.g., id., at

206, 208 (majority opinion) (conflating “[e]liminating racial discrimina-

tion” with eliminating all “[d]istinctions between citizens solely because

of their ancestry” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Callais, 608 U. S.,

at ___ (slip op., at 17–18) (similar); Parents Involved, 551 U. S., at 747–

748 (declaring that “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race

is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” including by ceasing any

race-conscious action designed to remediate the consequences of deeply

entrenched housing segregation). My concern now is that a fleeting na-

ture is among its many flaws. One wonders how the outcomes in the

above cases might have differed had the Court, like the Government and

the principal dissent today, relied upon the fact that the Fourteenth

Amendment was enacted to ensure that Black Americans are not treated

as second-class citizens, or had it at least acknowledged the connection

between the Amendment’s historical context and its remedial purpose.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

17

JACKSON, J., concurring

relevant history. As I have shown in this opinion, the Four-

teenth Amendment is not color-blind; rather, its core prin-

ciple is that our Nation does not tolerate racial caste—i.e.,

the systemic subordination that many (even some who op-

posed slavery) had wished to perpetuate after the Civil

War.54 So, the architects of the Second Founding did not

think or pretend that race didn’t matter. Quite to the con-

trary, they understood that race made an enormous differ-

ence to the lived experiences of all concerned—and to the

fate of our union. Indeed, it is for that very reason that a

radical restructuring was required.55 The Citizenship

Clause applies universally precisely because such universal

application was necessary to achieve the Amendment’s own

race-conscious remedial purposes.

Putting a finer point on this: When colonizationists ob-

jected to changing their norms to accommodate the equal

citizenship and rights of freedmen, freed Blacks and their

allies organized to push for a Constitution that would bring

their own antisubordination vision to fruition. See supra,

7–10. That kind of ambitious transformation—nothing less

than the remaking of the soul of a Nation beset by rank,

entrenched race-based prejudice and inequity—did not

come for free, or purely by the say-so of those who claimed

to be “color-blind.” It required heavy lifting, a fundamental

shift—the very thing for which the Fourteenth Amendment

——————

54 “A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded

ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group

against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry

and often immutable traits, traits that would be neutral in the abstract

but are ascribed life-and-death meaning in a hierarchy favoring the dom-

inant caste whose forebears designed it. . . . [T]hroughout human history,

across time and space, [at least] three caste systems have stood out to

this day. The tragically accelerated, chilling, and officially vanquished

caste system of Nazi Germany. The lingering, millennia-long caste sys-

tem of India. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyra-

mid in the United States.” Wilkerson 17.

55 Stampp 12.18 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

stands: a repudiation of the notion that there is a “superior,

dominant, ruling class of citizens,” Plessy, 163 U. S., at 559

(Harlan, J., dissenting), and a willingness to see, and strive

to eliminate, all remaining vestiges of historical subjuga-

tion.

So the principal dissent is wrong to complain that the

Court “has repurposed the Fourteenth Amendment to pro-

tect . . . rights that the Reconstruction Congress never con-

templated.” See post, at 91. Delegates to the Colored Con-

ventions drew upon their own experiences to successfully

argue for a new Constitution—one that protected funda-

mental human rights, including an individual’s “‘right to

own his body and mind’” and “the right of personal security

and protection against injuries to our bodies or good

name.”56 Thus, even in cases where the protagonist was not

a Black American, this Court’s Fourteenth Amendment

cases have focused, at bottom, on the same universal liberty

and equality interests that motivated the Fourteenth

Amendment itself. The question is (and always has been):

Does the affected individual or group enjoy equal dignity?

And the correct answer is (and has always been) to heed the

Fourteenth Amendment’s universalist, antisubordination

command. Our Nation did not undergo something as pro-

found and world-shifting as “Reconstruction” for naught.

* * *

After the Civil War, Fredrick Douglass frequently re-

flected on the events of the time through the lens of biblical

stories. In one speech, Douglass described how God leveled

Sodom and Gomorrah on account of sin, and how, in the af-

termath, Abraham stood atop a nearby mountain to survey

what remained. “[T]he orator used the image of Abraham

——————

56 S. C. Convention 27; see also ibid. (asserting that “our bodies have

been outraged with impunity”); Syracuse Convention 41 (“As a people,

we have been denied ownership of our bodies, our wives, homes, children,

and the products of our own labor”).Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

19

JACKSON, J., concurring

looking down upon the destroyed landscape to demand that

Americans look down upon their own recent self-destruc-

tion, and all but unjustified survival, and remember.”57

Douglass declared that his own aim was to “‘show that na-

tions should have memories.’”58

In the time since Douglass’s prescient observation, Amer-

icans have come to learn that fading memories are not the

only danger. The distortion of historical facts—retellings

that reimagine and repurpose past events to lend credence

to misbegotten aims—may be an even greater threat.

Yet here we are. The Government, the principal dissent,

and a handful of revisionist commentators now vigorously

promote an interpretation of the Citizenship Clause that di-

verges sharply not only from what the text says, but also

from the historical record as interpreted by the keepers of

“the call of remembrance” (trained historians).59 What is

more, this alternative account pitches Black Americans

against immigrants when the advocates who promoted the

Fourteenth Amendment did no such thing. Freed Blacks

fought for the shared humanity of all people. And the Great

Emancipator eventually foresaw that the only path forward

that could prevent a return—in any form—to slavery and

race-based subordination was to link the fates of all.

——————

57 Blight 482.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.; see Brief for Historians Martha S. Jones et al. as Amici Curiae;

Brief for Race Law Scholars as Amici Curiae 4–12; Brief for Originalist

Scholars Evan D. Bernick et al. as Amici Curiae; Brief for Gerard N.

Magliocca as Amicus Curiae 4–7. A substantial amount of scholarly work

has been done to unearth historical truths about the facts and circum-

stances that gave rise to the Reconstruction Amendments. In addition

to the sources I have cited throughout this opinion, see, for example, D.

Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War

(2008); E. Mathisen, The Loyal Republic: Traitors, Slaves, and the Re-

making of Citizenship in Civil War America (2018); K. Stampp, America

in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (1990).20 TRUMP v. BARBARA

JACKSON, J., concurring

Ultimately, then, it is the Government and JUSTICE

THOMAS who have “repurposed the Fourteenth Amend-

ment.” Post, at 91. By ignoring that our Constitution

stands firmly against caste and subjugation—on all axes

and in all manners—they deny the clear, universalist vision

shared and proclaimed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s

Framers: to “rebuild a shattered empire . . . to plant deep

and solid the corner-stone of eternal justice, and to erect

thereon a superstructure of perfect equality of every human

being before the law.”60

Of course, the ultimate irony is that for all the talk about

the detestable Dred Scott decision, the Government and the

principal dissent propose a return to its core tenet. Their

bottom line is that, for certain people, being born on Amer-

ican soil will not suffice to confer citizenship. It is that odi-

ous conclusion that the Citizenship Clause plainly rejects,

as the Court explains. Ante, at 26. I add only that the Four-

teenth Amendment’s universalist aims should forever be

the death knell for this kind of claim—one that seeks to

make bloodline the marker of birthright. The America that

was reborn from the rubble of the Civil War simply does not

countenance that inequitable result. Thankfully, a major-

ity of the Court remembered this today, and has dutifully

preserved the most basic animating principle of our Na-

tion’s founding—that all human beings are created equal—

once more.

——————

60 Address by Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Bedford, Pa., Sept. 4,

1866, in Cincinnati Commercial, Sept. 11, 1866, p. 2, col. 1.Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026)

1