In June 2026 the Supreme Court of the United States in Trump v. Barbara upheld the longstanding interpretation of the Citizenship Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment: birthright citizenship is "universal" to all born on American soil. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson authored an important concurrence. Her intent was to rebut the revisionist historical arguments made in the dissent, authored by Justice Thomas, who argued that the Amendment Framers intended to grant citizenship only to former slaves.

Justice Jackson's concurrence is a brief 20 pages and worth reading. She offers a couple arguments about the history of birthright citizenship and the Framer's intent. She draws heavily from Eric Foner's history on the "Second Founding," the idea that the Reconstruction Amendments reshaped the American concept of citizenship.

The Framers understood the purpose of the amendment

After the end of slavery Congress was was faced with the reality that millions of people born and raised in the United States had no legal claim to citizenship. Furthermore many states and localities had passed Black Codes to limit the rights of the freed slaves, an attempt to keep the racial hierarchy of slavery in all but name. Congress was more powerful in the aftermath of the Civil War and recognized the states could not act unilaterally on issues of Black citizenship. And so Congress took the lead on redefining Americans' relationship with the national government.

The origin of Citizenship Clause is credited to Senator Trumbull of Illinois. He introduced the language in a proposal for the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that specified that "all Persons of African descent born in the United States" would earn citizenship. Within a day of this proposal he withdrew it and submitted a new clause, nearly identical to the Fourteenth Amendment, that included the phrase "without distinction of color." And from Trumbull the universalist vision of citizenship was embedded into law.

The intent of the Framers is not historically ambiguous. Justice Jackson recounts Congressional debates specifically on the language and intent of birthright citizenship. Senators were demonstrably aware of immigration. References to Chinese in California and the Roma in Pennsylvania appear in the Amendment debates. Some Senators objected to immigrants receiving citizenship simply by birth. Jackson argues that these records prove the Framers understood the challenges of immigration with respect to citizenship. Their relationship to immigration was not dissimilar to our contemporary politics. In spite of these fears the Framers insisted upon, adopted, and ratified the universal intent of the Amendment instead of narrowing the scope to only former slaves.

Black people identified the importance of birthright citizenship

"[a] diverse origin does not disprove a common nature, nor does it disprove a united destiny."

– Frederick Douglass

Before and after the Civil War there are record of a number of Black (or Colored) Conventions where free and formerly enslaved African Americans gathered to organize and develop a politics for Black people in the United States. There are records of some 600 of these conventions in in the 19th century before and after the Civil War. The delegates of these conventions repeatedly used language such as "we are Americans" and "we are citizens" to stake their claim as full-fledged members of the country. At a time when even free Blacks faced legal discrimination that culminated in the Dred Scott (1857), these delegates recognized their allegiance stemmed from their birth, something they shared in common with nearly every other American white and Black.

Justice Jackson argues that the Black political movement before and after the Civil War demanded recognition of their citizenship claims because they were born on American soil. They did not ask for special status or privileges with respect to the white population or other immigrant communities. They consistently argued that if the nation was founded upon the idea that "all men are created equal" then it must be that "creation," or birthright citizenship, that vests liberty and freedom onto each individual.

Implications of the universal approach

The Fourteenth Amendment repudiated hierarchy and expanded democracy across the states. No longer would laws legally perpetuate a subordinate caste on the basis of skin color or ancestry. The cornerstone of this change was citizenship. With universal and irreversible political equality country was fundamentally transformed since it granted rights and protections to all born here and invited all citizens to participate equally in a more democratic process.

The universal vision of birthright citizenship is extremely powerful and liberating. It applies equally to every American born in the U.S. It doesn't matter if your ancestors fought in the American Revolution or you're the second-generation of recently arrived immigrants. It's our common origin that we share. Our place of birth can never be revoked as it's an unchangeable fact and so too our citizenship. Out of this shared origin we are granted the same liberty and freedom of our neighbors. With a fundamental, shared origin we can move forward without fear of existence and build the country that we envision.

The modern conservative movement, ascendant since the 1970s, practices a politics that undermines democratic institutions and rights in this country. They are not interested in collective national projects. They attack public schools, labor, voting, reproductive, and medical rights. Foundational to these institutions is Citizenship. The conservative political vision is one where the preferred economic and cultural classes of people receive a majority of the benefits, in the form of property and capital, at the expense of others. They have little interest in the rights and equality since promoting those ideals comes at the expense of their preferred hierarchy.

Conservative fears over immigration are an excuse to undermine our relationship with the country and each other. When citizenship is no longer a privilege of birth we will look to our politics to define it. At this point the issue of citizenship might as well be unpredictable as it will be a function of each political era. Worse is that destroying the universal birthright citizenship will bifurcate Americans further into an entrenched ruling and subordinate classes: those who have and those who do not. It also opens the possibility to denaturalizing and stripping citizenship members of society who may share beliefs and convictions that contradict or undermine the current ruling political class.

The U.S is not a perfect country. Immigrants are consistently treated as subordinate, especially in labor relationships. And it applies to both undocumented and documented. However efforts to deny birthright citizenship will only increase the number of vulnerable individuals in our country. Is this a healthy or democratic direction? If the founding principles of this country are that "all men are created equal" then how does a more exclusive access to citizenship align with the founding principles?

American citizenship is under attack, but not from immigrants. If we build structural burdens that discourage racial equality and integration, then we undermine collective efforts across society as individuals will see less of themselves across the citizenship divide. It's a similar structural problem that divides the educational interests of people who attend private schools and people who attend public schools. It's a similar divide between home-owners with a mortgage from renters when addressing issues of housing affordability and instability.

The United States exists as a function of its people, not the reverse. Universal birthright citizenship is the promise that everyone born here has a fundamental interest in building a livable and free society. Sadly, people who undermine birthright citizen are interested in the reverse relationship. The country and it's rulers shall dictate to the people. It's related to the way elected representatives gerrymander to choose a favorable electorate. They prefer the ability to impose a subjective test with exclusive criteria in order to curate the citizenry and dole out the benefits to this select few. It's dangerous. We should remember the promises the universal vision and reject efforts to undermine this foundational aspect of our democracy.