By Tom Jarvis
A nationwide class action filed in federal court in Concord became the vehicle through which the United States Supreme Court resolved the constitutional dispute over President Donald Trump’s effort to restrict birthright citizenship.
In a 6–3 ruling issued June 30 in Trump v. Barbara, the Court affirmed an order from the US District Court for the District of New Hampshire blocking the executive order. A five-justice majority held that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, while the sixth justice reached the same result under the federal citizenship statute.
The clause 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 reside.”
Federal law similarly provides that a person “born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a US citizen at birth. 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a)
On January 20, 2025, Trump issued Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” The order directed federal departments and agencies not to issue documents recognizing US citizenship or accept documents from state, local, or other authorities purporting to recognize US citizenship for a child born in the United States when the mother was unlawfully present and the father was neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident, or when the mother was lawfully but temporarily present and the father held neither status.
Challenges followed in several jurisdictions. In the Granite State, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire (ACLU-NH) and several partner organizations filed New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support v. Trump on the day the order was signed. A separate case, Barbara v. Trump, was filed in Concord on June 27, 2025, after the Supreme Court ruled that day in Trump v. CASA.
Trump v. CASA concerned the authority of federal courts to issue universal injunctions extending relief beyond the parties to a lawsuit. The Court did not decide whether Trump’s order was constitutional. It held that the injunctions in those cases could extend no further than necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs.
The Barbara plaintiffs instead sought relief through a nationwide class action.
Margaret O’Grady, a professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law who teaches constitutional law, says the class-action structure allowed the plaintiffs to pursue nationwide relief without relying on the type of universal injunction the Supreme Court had just limited.
“A class action is the avenue the Court left open when it declined to order a nationwide injunction in Trump v. CASA,” O’Grady says. “Class actions are different from universal injunctions because all those in the same situation as the named plaintiff are, under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, plaintiffs, too – part of the class.”
The first named plaintiff, identified by the pseudonym Barbara, was a Honduran citizen living in New Hampshire with a pending asylum application.
SangYeob Kim, director of the ACLU-NH Immigrants’ Rights Project, explains why the case was filed in the Granite State.
“We filed this lawsuit in New Hampshire because there are many people in our Granite State communities who would have been affected by the executive order,” Kim says. “The ACLU-NH Immigrants’ Rights Project has been working for more than eight years using targeted impact litigation, advocacy, and public outreach to protect the rights and liberties of immigrant and refugee Granite Staters.”
He adds, “From this work, we know the people and the families that would be devastated by this attack on birthright citizenship, and because of our deep relationships and trust we have built with them, we were able to bring this case from New Hampshire. We are thankful to all of our brave clients who brought this lawsuit.”
Kim also addresses the timing of the filing.
“The class action strategy was considered at an early stage, and so we, our legal partners, and new class representatives were prepared when the CASA decision was ultimately released,” he says. “Filing the class action case was important, as we could not take any chances with so much at stake.”
On July 10, 2025, US District Court Judge Joseph Laplante provisionally certified a nationwide class of children covered by the executive order and preliminarily enjoined its enforcement against the class. His ruling relied in part on his analysis in the earlier New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support case.
The administration sought Supreme Court review before the First Circuit ruled on the appeal. The justices granted certiorari before judgment on December 5, 2025, and heard arguments on April 1, 2026.
Trump attended part of the oral argument, becoming the first sitting president to attend an oral argument before the US Supreme Court. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued for the administration, and Cecillia Wang of the ACLU argued for Barbara and the other plaintiffs.
In its Supreme Court brief, the Justice Department argued that the Citizenship Clause requires complete “political jurisdiction,” meaning “direct and immediate allegiance” to the United States, and that the children covered by the executive order did not satisfy that requirement. The department did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) submitted an amicus brief supporting the administration. It argued that American citizenship rests on “mutual consent between the individual and the nation” and that birth in the United States alone did not satisfy the clause’s jurisdictional requirement. FAIR did not respond to a request for comment.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion of the Court, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The five-justice majority concluded that children covered by the order are subject to US jurisdiction and that the Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark confirmed that interpretation.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment and dissented in part. He agreed that the District Court’s order should be affirmed but concluded that the executive order violated the federal citizenship statute rather than the Constitution. He wrote that Congress could amend the statute or enact new legislation establishing exceptions. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the judgment.
O’Grady cautions that the 6–3 disposition does not mean six justices agreed that the executive order violated the 14th Amendment.
“Given Kavanaugh’s opinion, the decision means that four members of the Supreme Court think that the executive order was constitutional – that is, that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship,” she says. “The notion that the 14th Amendment does not mean what it says was a fringe legal theory not too long ago.”
Trump responded to the decision in a Truth Social post:
“The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process. No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary! Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support!”
O’Grady says Kavanaugh’s separate opinion appears to offer the administration “a road map for overturning birthright citizenship legislatively.” Trump’s assertion that Congress could act without a constitutional amendment was consistent with Kavanaugh’s opinion, but not with the five-justice opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. Because the majority held that the 14th Amendment itself guarantees citizenship to the children covered by the order, ordinary legislation could not override that constitutional holding unless the Court later departed from its decision.
Kim also addresses the ruling’s broader implications.
“It is difficult to overstate the significance of this decision: it is about what it means to be an American under our Constitution,” he says. “The Supreme Court’s unwavering opinion makes clear that if you are born here, you are a citizen.”