At a glance:
- The Fourteenth Amendment established a constitutional definition of U.S. citizenship after the Civil War.
- Dred Scott v. Sandford is an important part of the historical background because the decision denied citizenship to Black Americans covered by its ruling.
- United States v. Wong Kim Ark became a major Supreme Court precedent interpreting the Citizenship Clause.
- Modern disputes have focused on whether a parent’s immigration status can affect the citizenship of a child born in the United States.
- The modern constitutional debate centers on the meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Few questions are more fundamental to a country than determining who is one of its citizens. In the United States, the modern constitutional rule governing citizenship by birth within the country comes primarily from the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision emerged from a specific legal and political context that shaped its meaning and purpose.
Its development is closely connected to one of the most consequential and widely criticized Supreme Court decisions in American history: Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). In Dred Scott, the Supreme Court concluded that Black Americans descended from people brought to the United States and enslaved could not be citizens of the United States under the Constitution as the Court interpreted it. Eleven years later, the Fourteenth Amendment established an explicit constitutional definition of citizenship.
More than 150 years after that amendment was ratified, the meaning of its Citizenship Clause again became the subject of a major national controversy. In 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order seeking to limit federal recognition of citizenship for certain children born in the United States to parents who were unlawfully or temporarily present. The Supreme Court ultimately addressed the constitutional question in Trump v. Barbara in 2026.
The constitutional sequence:
Dred Scott → Civil War → Fourteenth Amendment → United States v. Wong Kim Ark → Modern Birthright Citizenship Debate → Trump v. Barbara
Each stage contributed to the legal framework governing citizenship in the United States today.
What Was the Dred Scott Case?
Dred Scott was an enslaved Black man who sued for his freedom after having lived with his enslaver in places where slavery had been prohibited. His case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1857, the Court ruled against Scott in Dred Scott v. Sandford. The decision went substantially beyond determining whether Scott was free.
Chief Justice Roger Taney’s majority opinion concluded that Black Americans descended from enslaved Africans were not included among the citizens contemplated by the Constitution and therefore could not claim U.S. citizenship on that basis. Because the Court concluded that Scott was not a citizen for purposes of Article III, it determined that he could not maintain his lawsuit in federal court under diversity jurisdiction.
The decision also addressed slavery in the federal territories and concluded that Congress lacked authority to prohibit slavery in certain territories. The ruling became one of the most controversial decisions in Supreme Court history and intensified the national conflict over slavery before the Civil War.
An Important Historical Qualification
It is important not to oversimplify Dred Scott by suggesting that its interpretation of citizenship was universally accepted at the time.
The decision itself included dissents. Justice Benjamin Curtis, for example, disputed the majority’s historical analysis and argued that free Black Americans had been citizens of several states when the Constitution was adopted. This disagreement is significant because it demonstrates that the meaning of citizenship was contested even before the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Civil War Changed the Constitutional Landscape
The Civil War fundamentally transformed American constitutional law. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime. But abolition created another fundamental legal question: What was the citizenship status of formerly enslaved people and other Black Americans?
Congress addressed citizenship in the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The broader constitutional answer followed with the Fourteenth Amendment.
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1:
“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 opening sentence is known as the Citizenship Clause. The Constitution Annotated, an official congressional resource explaining Supreme Court constitutional doctrine, describes the citizenship provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment as a repudiation of the citizenship rule announced in Dred Scott. The Constitution now contained an explicit national citizenship guarantee.
What Does “Birthright Citizenship” Mean?
In general discussions, birthright citizenship refers to acquiring citizenship because of the circumstances of one’s birth rather than through the naturalization process later in life.
For people born within the United States, the constitutional language contains two elements:
- A person must be “born or naturalized in the United States”; and
- The person must be “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
The second phrase has played a central role in legal debates over the boundaries of birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court has long recognized that birth within U.S. territory does not produce citizenship in literally every conceivable circumstance.
Historically recognized exceptions have included, for example, children born to foreign diplomats and children born to enemy forces occupying U.S. territory. The much more difficult modern question has been whether the immigration status of a child’s parents creates an additional exception.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark: A Landmark Citizenship Case
One of the most important Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Citizenship Clause came three decades after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. The case was United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898).
Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents. His parents were from China and, under U.S. laws at the time, were not allowed to become U.S. citizens through naturalization. Wong later traveled outside the United States. When he attempted to return, federal authorities denied him entry on the theory that he was not a U.S. citizen.
The case reached the Supreme Court. The Court held that Wong Kim Ark was a citizen of the United States by virtue of his birth in the country. The decision became one of the central precedents governing the Citizenship Clause.
Importantly, Wong Kim Ark did not involve parents who were unlawfully present in the United States. That factual distinction later became part of the modern debate over how broadly the decision should apply.
The Central Debate: “Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof”
For many years, the principal constitutional disagreement over birthright citizenship concerned the meaning of six words: “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
The Broader Interpretation
Under the broader interpretation, people physically present in the United States are ordinarily subject to American law and governmental authority. Under this reasoning, children born in the United States generally satisfy the jurisdiction requirement regardless of whether their parents are citizens, lawful permanent residents, temporary visitors, or unlawfully present.
This interpretation relied heavily on the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, historical understandings of citizenship by birth, and Wong Kim Ark.
The Narrower Interpretation
A competing interpretation argued that “subject to the jurisdiction” required something more than being required to obey U.S. law. Supporters of this position emphasized concepts such as political allegiance and argued that certain foreign nationals, particularly people unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States, did not have the type of relationship with the United States contemplated by the Citizenship Clause.
Under this interpretation, their U.S.-born children would not necessarily acquire constitutional citizenship automatically.
The 2025 Executive Order on Birthright Citizenship
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.”
The order adopted the narrower interpretation of the Citizenship Clause. It directed federal agencies not to recognize citizenship for certain children born in the United States when the child’s mother was unlawfully present and the father was neither a U.S. citizen nor lawful permanent resident.
It also covered certain circumstances in which the mother was lawfully but temporarily present, such as under some student, work, tourist, or visa-waiver arrangements, and the father was neither a citizen nor lawful permanent resident.
The executive order itself made a historical connection to Dred Scott. It acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment repudiated Dred Scott’s exclusion of people of African descent from citizenship, while arguing that the amendment did not guarantee citizenship to every person born within U.S. territory regardless of parental circumstances.
Opponents challenged that interpretation in federal court.
The Supreme Court’s 2026 Decision: Trump v. Barbara
The constitutional dispute ultimately reached the Supreme Court in Trump v. Barbara.
On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court held that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
The Court rejected the executive order’s interpretation of the Citizenship Clause. As a result, the immigration status of a child’s parents, specifically whether they are unlawfully or temporarily present, does not by itself remove a U.S.-born child from the constitutional citizenship guarantee recognized by the Court.
The decision does not mean that every person born anywhere automatically becomes a U.S. citizen. Citizenship for people born outside the United States is governed substantially by federal statutes, and recognized exceptions to citizenship based on birth within U.S. territory continue to exist.
How Does Dred Scott Relate to This?
It would be inaccurate to say that Dred Scott and the modern birthright-citizenship cases presented the same constitutional issue.
Dred Scott Asked About Race and Constitutional Citizenship
The central citizenship issue in Dred Scott concerned whether Black Americans could belong to the constitutional political community recognized as citizens. The Court’s majority answered that question in the negative. The Fourteenth Amendment later superseded that citizenship holding.
The Modern Debate Asked About Parental Immigration Status
The modern birthright-citizenship dispute concerned a different question: does the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” exclude U.S.-born children based on their parents’ immigration status?
That question arose under the very constitutional amendment adopted after Dred Scott. Therefore, Dred Scott is best understood as part of the historical foundation of modern birthright citizenship rather than as precedent controlling the modern immigration-status question.
Why the Connection Still Matters
Although the legal questions differ, the historical relationship remains significant. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, the Constitution did not expressly define national citizenship in the way Section 1 now does. The controversy surrounding Dred Scott demonstrated the enormous consequences that could follow from uncertainty about who qualified as an American citizen.
Following the Civil War, citizenship was placed explicitly into the constitutional text. That change matters because constitutional citizenship is different from an ordinary immigration policy.
Congress has extensive authority to enact immigration and naturalization laws. Presidents also exercise significant authority in administering and enforcing federal immigration laws. But neither Congress nor the President can change the meaning of the Constitution simply through ordinary legislation or executive action. When disagreement concerns the Citizenship Clause itself, courts may ultimately be required to determine what the Constitution permits or requires.
Immigration Status and Citizenship Are Different Legal Concepts
Another important distinction is the difference between the immigration status of a parent and the citizenship status of a child. These are separate legal questions.
A parent may be living in the United States without lawful immigration status while their child may have U.S. citizenship based on birth in the United States. The child’s citizenship does not automatically provide the parent with lawful immigration status.
Likewise, having a U.S.-citizen child does not automatically provide a parent with permanent residence or protection from removal. Citizenship law and immigration law frequently interact, but they are not interchangeable.
A Constitutional Timeline
1857: Dred Scott v. Sandford
The Supreme Court rules that Black Americans descended from enslaved Africans were not citizens under its interpretation of the Constitution.
1865: Thirteenth Amendment
Slavery is abolished, except as punishment for crime.
1866: Civil Rights Act
Congress legislates a national citizenship rule in the aftermath of slavery and the Civil War.
1868: Fourteenth Amendment
The Constitution establishes that people born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens.
1898: United States v. Wong Kim Ark
The Supreme Court holds that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a U.S. citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment.
2025: Birthright Citizenship Executive Order
President Trump directs federal agencies to deny recognition of citizenship in certain cases involving U.S.-born children whose parents lack citizenship or permanent immigration status.
2026: Trump v. Barbara
The Supreme Court holds that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are subject to U.S. jurisdiction and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment.
What Dred Scott Does and Does Not Tell Us About Birthright Citizenship
The connection between Dred Scott and birthright citizenship comes down to three key points.
First, Dred Scott is important to the history of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision denied U.S. citizenship to people of African descent covered by its ruling. The Fourteenth Amendment later established a constitutional definition of citizenship.
Second, Dred Scott did not decide today’s birthright-citizenship questions. It did not address children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants or temporary visa holders. The Citizenship Clause at the center of today’s debate was added to the Constitution in 1868, eleven years after Dred Scott.
Third, later Supreme Court cases have shaped how the Citizenship Clause is understood. United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), for example, became a major precedent on birthright citizenship.
In short, Dred Scott provides important historical context, but modern birthright-citizenship questions must be considered under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court decisions interpreting it.
Key Takeaways
- Dred Scott v. Sandford denied citizenship to Black Americans under the Court’s pre-Civil War interpretation of the Constitution.
- The Fourteenth Amendment established that people born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are U.S. citizens.
- United States v. Wong Kim Ark became a key Supreme Court precedent interpreting birthright citizenship.
- Modern disputes have focused on whether a parent’s immigration status affects a U.S.-born child’s citizenship.
- Citizenship and a parent’s immigration status are separate legal questions.
Together, these developments show how the Fourteenth Amendment and later Supreme Court rulings shaped the modern understanding of birthright citizenship.
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Official U.S. Government Sources
- U.S. Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1 — Constitution Annotated, Congress.gov / Library of Congress
- Constitution Annotated — Historical Background on the Citizenship Clause
- Constitution Annotated — Citizenship Clause Doctrine
- The White House — “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” Executive Order, January 20, 2025
- Supreme Court of the United States — Trump v. Barbara, No. 25-365 (2026)
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SIANA J.MCLEAN is a Partner at Richards and Jurusik, who practices immigration law with a focus on asylum, removal defense, and immigration court matters. She has extensive experience representing clients before U.S. Immigration Courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals. (Full Bio)
