The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution contains 27 words that have defined American citizenship for 157 years: "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 reside." That single sentence — ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War — established birthright citizenship as a constitutional guarantee. It meant that if you were born on American soil, you were an American citizen, regardless of your parents' status, race, or national origin.
Now that guarantee faces its most serious legal challenge in more than a century. In March 2025, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Texas v. Garcia, a case that asks whether the children of undocumented immigrants are entitled to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The case centers on a narrow reading of the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" — an interpretation that, if adopted, would strip citizenship from an estimated 5.5 million people currently living in the United States, according to Migration Policy Institute data. The oral arguments are scheduled for October 2025. The decision could arrive by summer 2026.
This is not an abstract legal debate. The 14th Amendment is the constitutional foundation for civil rights law in the United States. It is the reason Brown v. Board of Education could desegregate schools. It is the reason same-sex marriage became legal nationwide. It is the reason states cannot deny voting rights based on race. And it is the reason that approximately 33 million Americans — roughly 10 percent of the current U.S. population — hold citizenship today, according to Pew Research Center estimates of birthright citizenship beneficiaries over the past four decades.
What is the 14th Amendment?
The 14th Amendment is one of three Reconstruction Amendments adopted after the Civil War to guarantee rights to formerly enslaved people. Ratified on July 9, 1868, it fundamentally restructured the relationship between the federal government, the states, and individual citizens. Before the 14th Amendment, citizenship was defined by states, not the federal government. The amendment nationalized citizenship and imposed a uniform standard: birth or naturalization within U.S. territory confers citizenship, and no state can take that away.
The amendment contains five sections. Section 1 is the most consequential. It establishes birthright citizenship, defines due process, and guarantees equal protection under the law. Section 2 addresses congressional representation. Section 3 bars former Confederates from holding federal office. Section 4 repudiates Confederate war debt. Section 5 grants Congress enforcement power.
Section 1 is the engine of modern civil rights law. It has been cited in more than 6,000 federal court decisions, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis. It is the constitutional basis for Roe v. Wade (later overturned), Obergefell v. Hodges (marriage equality), Loving v. Virginia (interracial marriage), and Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel). Without the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights would not apply to state governments — only to the federal government. The 14th Amendment is what makes your First Amendment rights enforceable against a state legislature or a city police department.
What does the 14th Amendment actually say?
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads in full:
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 reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This single paragraph contains four distinct guarantees:
The Citizenship Clause: "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 reside." This is birthright citizenship. It overturned the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that Black Americans could never be citizens.
The Privileges or Immunities Clause: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." This clause was intended to protect fundamental rights from state interference. The Supreme Court gutted it in the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases, and it has been largely dormant since.
The Due Process Clause: "Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This clause requires fair procedures before the government can take away your freedom, your property, or your life. It also serves as the constitutional basis for unenumerated rights — rights not explicitly listed in the Constitution but considered fundamental, such as the right to privacy and the right to marry.
The Equal Protection Clause: "Nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This clause prohibits states from treating similarly situated people differently without a legitimate reason. It is the constitutional foundation for anti-discrimination law. It applies to "any person" — not just citizens.
The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is now the center of the legal fight. It appears only in the Citizenship Clause. Opponents of birthright citizenship argue that undocumented immigrants are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States because they owe allegiance to another country. Proponents argue that "jurisdiction" means subject to U.S. law — and undocumented immigrants are prosecuted, taxed, and regulated under U.S. law, which means they are unambiguously within U.S. jurisdiction.
What is birthright citizenship?
Birthright citizenship means that anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a U.S. citizen, regardless of their parents' citizenship or immigration status. It is also called jus soli — Latin for "right of the soil." The United States is one of 33 countries that grant unrestricted birthright citizenship, according to the Library of Congress. Most are in the Western Hemisphere. Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and nearly every country in Central America and the Caribbean recognize birthright citizenship.
Most European and Asian countries use jus sanguinis — "right of blood" — which grants citizenship based on parentage, not place of birth. A child born in Germany to non-German parents is not automatically a German citizen. A child born in Japan to non-Japanese parents is not automatically a Japanese citizen. The United States is different. A child born in Los Angeles to tourists from Sweden is a U.S. citizen. A child born in Houston to undocumented parents from Guatemala is a U.S. citizen. That has been the law since 1868.
Birthright citizenship was not an accident. It was a deliberate repudiation of Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 Supreme Court decision that held that Black Americans — even free Black Americans — could never be U.S. citizens because they were "beings of an inferior order" with "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The 14th Amendment was written to destroy that doctrine. Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan, who introduced the Citizenship Clause, said it would ensure that "every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States."
The Supreme Court affirmed this interpretation in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who were not eligible for citizenship under the Chinese Exclusion Act. When Wong traveled to China and attempted to return, the U.S. government denied him entry, claiming he was not a citizen. The Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that Wong was a citizen by birth. The majority opinion, written by Justice Horace Gray, held that the 14th Amendment adopted the English common law rule of birthright citizenship, and that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" excluded only children of foreign diplomats and enemy soldiers — not children of immigrants.
Wong Kim Ark has been the controlling precedent for 127 years. The current Supreme Court case asks the justices to overturn it.
The history of the 14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment was born in the wreckage of the Civil War. When the war ended in 1865, four million formerly enslaved people were free — but they were not citizens. They had no legal status. Southern states immediately passed Black Codes, laws designed to restore white supremacy by criminalizing unemployment, restricting movement, and forcing Black Americans into labor contracts that resembled slavery. Tennessee required Black residents to carry proof of employment at all times or face arrest. Mississippi prohibited Black people from renting land outside of towns. South Carolina required Black workers to sign year-long contracts and forfeit wages if they left early.
Congress responded with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which declared that all persons born in the United States were citizens and entitled to equal protection under the law. President Andrew Johnson vetoed it. Congress overrode the veto — the first time in American history that Congress overrode a presidential veto of a major piece of legislation. But Republicans in Congress worried that the Supreme Court would strike down the Civil Rights Act as unconstitutional, or that a future Congress would repeal it. So they wrote the principles of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution as the 14th Amendment.
The amendment passed the House on June 13, 1866, by a vote of 120-32. It passed the Senate on June 8, 1866, by a vote of 33-11. Every Republican voted yes. Every Democrat voted no. Ratification required approval by three-fourths of the states. Congress made ratification a condition for readmitting former Confederate states to the Union. Southern states that had rejected the amendment in 1866 and 1867 ratified it in 1868 under military occupation. Ohio and New Jersey attempted to rescind their ratifications, but Congress ignored them. On July 9, 1868, Secretary of State William Seward certified that the amendment had been ratified by 28 of the 37 states. The 14th Amendment became part of the Constitution.
The amendment did not end racial discrimination. Southern states adopted Jim Crow laws that segregated schools, transportation, housing, and public accommodations. The Supreme Court upheld segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), ruling that "separate but equal" facilities did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. It took 58 years for the Court to reverse itself in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which held that separate schools were inherently unequal.
But the 14th Amendment survived. And over the course of the 20th century, it became the constitutional foundation for dismantling legal segregation, protecting voting rights, guaranteeing due process, and expanding civil liberties. The amendment that was written to protect formerly enslaved people became the amendment that protects everyone.
How the 14th Amendment has been interpreted over time
The 14th Amendment has been the basis for some of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in American history. Its interpretation has shifted depending on the composition of the Court, the political climate, and the specific rights at stake. But three principles have remained constant: birthright citizenship is automatic, equal protection applies to everyone, and states cannot deprive people of fundamental rights without due process.
Birthright citizenship: The Supreme Court has never wavered on this. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Court held that a child born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents was a citizen, even though his parents were ineligible for citizenship under federal law. In Plyler v. Doe (1982), the Court held that undocumented children have a constitutional right to attend public schools, and noted in passing that children born to undocumented parents in the United States are citizens. The Court has never suggested that birthright citizenship depends on the parents' immigration status.
Equal protection: The Equal Protection Clause has been interpreted to prohibit racial discrimination (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954), sex discrimination (United States v. Virginia, 1996), and discrimination based on sexual orientation (Romer v. Evans, 1996). It does not prohibit all forms of discrimination — only those that lack a rational basis or that target a protected class. The Court applies different levels of scrutiny depending on the type of discrimination. Racial classifications receive "strict scrutiny" and are almost always struck down. Sex-based classifications receive "intermediate scrutiny" and are sometimes upheld. Other classifications receive "rational basis review" and are usually upheld.
Due process: The Due Process Clause has two dimensions. Procedural due process requires fair procedures before the government can deprive someone of life, liberty, or property — notice, a hearing, the right to present evidence. Substantive due process protects certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if the procedures are fair. The Court has recognized substantive due process rights to marry (Loving v. Virginia, 1967), to use contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965), to refuse medical treatment (Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 1990), and to same-sex intimacy (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003). The Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, rejected the substantive due process framework for abortion rights and raised questions about whether other unenumerated rights remain protected.
The 14th Amendment has also been used to "incorporate" most of the Bill of Rights against the states. The Bill of Rights originally applied only to the federal government. The 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause has been interpreted to make most of those rights applicable to state and local governments as well. This process, called "selective incorporation," began in the 1920s and accelerated in the 1960s. Today, nearly every provision of the Bill of Rights applies to the states, including the First Amendment (free speech, religion, press), the Fourth Amendment (searches and seizures), the Fifth Amendment (self-incrimination), the Sixth Amendment (right to counsel), and the Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment).
The current Supreme Court case on birthright citizenship
Texas v. Garcia began in 2023 when the state of Texas sued the federal government, arguing that the children of undocumented immigrants born in Texas are not U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment. The case was brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has built his political career on immigration enforcement. The lawsuit challenges the citizenship of an estimated 4.5 million U.S.-born children of undocumented parents, according to Pew Research Center data.
Texas argues that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the Citizenship Clause excludes children whose parents are not lawfully present in the United States. The state claims that undocumented immigrants are not fully subject to U.S. jurisdiction because they owe allegiance to another country and are subject to deportation. Texas points to an 1884 Supreme Court case, Elk v. Wilkins, which held that a Native American man born on a reservation was not a U.S. citizen because he was "subject to" a tribal government, not the U.S. government. Texas argues that the same logic applies to children of undocumented immigrants.
The federal government argues that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means subject to U.S. law — and undocumented immigrants are unambiguously subject to U.S. law. They pay taxes. They are prosecuted for crimes. They are regulated by federal agencies. The only people not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States are foreign diplomats with diplomatic immunity and enemy soldiers during wartime. The government cites Wong Kim Ark, which held that a child born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents was a citizen, even though his parents were prohibited from becoming citizens themselves.
A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in favor of Texas in December 2024. The majority opinion, written by Judge James Ho — who once wrote a law review article defending birthright citizenship — held that Wong Kim Ark did not address the citizenship status of children born to undocumented immigrants, and that the case should be decided by the Supreme Court. Judge Ho wrote that "the question of whether the Citizenship Clause extends birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens has never been definitively resolved."
That is not true. Wong Kim Ark held that birthright citizenship applies to children born in the United States to parents who are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States, and it defined "jurisdiction" as being subject to U.S. law. Wong's parents were not citizens. They were not eligible to become citizens. They were Chinese nationals living in the United States under a treaty that explicitly stated they would never be allowed to naturalize. If Wong Kim Ark applies to them, it applies to undocumented immigrants.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari in March 2025. Oral arguments are scheduled for October 2025. A decision is expected by June 2026. If the Court rules in favor of Texas, it will overturn 127 years of precedent and strip citizenship from millions of people who have lived their entire lives as Americans.
What would change if birthright citizenship were limited?
If the Supreme Court rules that children born to undocumented parents are not U.S. citizens, the consequences would be immediate and catastrophic. An estimated 5.5 million people currently living in the United States would lose their citizenship, according to Migration Policy Institute projections. Most are children. Many have never lived in another country. They would become stateless — people without citizenship in any nation.
Statelessness is not a legal abstraction. It means no passport. No right to vote. No access to federal benefits. No legal right to work. No protection from deportation. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees describes statelessness as "a violation of human rights" that leaves people "invisible, voiceless, and vulnerable." The United States is a party to international agreements that prohibit the creation of stateless persons. A Supreme Court decision eliminating birthright citizenship would violate those agreements.
The decision would also create an enforcement crisis. How would the government identify people who are no longer citizens? Birth certificates do not list parents' immigration status. Hospitals do not track it. The government would need to build a system to determine which children born in the United States are citizens and which are not. That system would require documentation of parents' immigration status at the time of birth — documentation that does not currently exist for most people. The result would be a massive expansion of surveillance, documentation requirements, and bureaucratic gatekeeping.
It would also create a two-tier system of citizenship. Children born to U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents would be citizens. Children born to undocumented immigrants, temporary visa holders, or tourists would not. A child born in a hospital in Texas to a mother on a tourist visa from France would not be a U.S. citizen. A child born in New York to a father on a student visa from India would not be a U.S. citizen. The child's legal status would depend entirely on the parents' legal status at the moment of birth.
This is not hypothetical. Several states have already attempted to deny birth certificates to children of undocumented parents. In 2015, Texas began requiring parents to present specific forms of identification to obtain birth certificates for their children. Undocumented parents often lack those forms of ID. The policy was challenged in federal court and partially blocked, but it remains in effect in modified form. If the Supreme Court eliminates birthright citizenship, states will have a legal basis to refuse birth certificates — and citizenship — to children of undocumented parents.
The economic consequences would also be severe. U.S. citizens can work legally, access federal student aid, and qualify for Social Security and Medicare. Non-citizens cannot. If millions of people lose citizenship, they lose access to the labor market, the education system, and the social safety net. They would be forced into the underground economy, where wages are lower, protections are nonexistent, and exploitation is routine. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that eliminating birthright citizenship would reduce U.S. GDP by $1.4 trillion over a decade.
Why the 14th Amendment matters right now
The 14th Amendment is under attack in ways that go beyond birthright citizenship. In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, rejecting the due process framework that had protected abortion rights for 49 years. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion arguing that the Court should reconsider other due process precedents, including Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception), Lawrence v. Texas (same-sex intimacy), and Obergefell v. Hodges (marriage equality). Those cases are now vulnerable.
The Equal Protection Clause is also under pressure. In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, holding that race-conscious admissions policies violate the Equal Protection Clause. The decision was a dramatic departure from decades of precedent allowing limited consideration of race to remedy past discrimination. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that "eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it." The logic of that decision could be used to challenge other civil rights protections, including the Voting Rights Act.
And now birthright citizenship is on the chopping block. The Texas v. Garcia case is not an isolated legal dispute. It is part of a broader effort to narrow the scope of the 14th Amendment and limit who counts as a full member of American society. If the Supreme Court rules that the children of undocumented immigrants are not citizens, it will be the first time since Dred Scott that the Court has held that people born on U.S. soil are not entitled to citizenship.
The 14th Amendment was written to ensure that citizenship could not be taken away by a hostile government or a reactionary Supreme Court. It was written to guarantee that birth on American soil made you an American, regardless of who your parents were or where they came from. It was written to ensure that the government could not create a permanent underclass of people who live in the United States but have no legal status, no rights, and no path to citizenship.
That guarantee is now in jeopardy. The Supreme Court will decide in 2026 whether the 14th Amendment still means what it says — or whether 157 years of precedent can be erased by a 6-3 vote. The stakes are not abstract. They are 5.5 million people who were born in the United States and have lived their entire lives as Americans. If the Court rules against them, they will wake up one morning as citizens and go to bed that night as stateless.
