On June 30, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that children born in the United States to undocumented parents are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees them citizenship, according to SCOTUSblog.
The 6-3 decision in Trump v. Barbara struck down President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order 14160, which denied citizenship to children of certain immigrants. The order prohibited citizenship for children of mothers in the United States illegally and fathers who were not citizens or permanent residents. It also precluded citizenship for children of mothers in the United States only for short-term stays with fathers who were not citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Quakers from Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) and Friends General Conference (FGC) signed a friend of the court brief, also called an amicus brief, supporting the plaintiff, pseudonymously named Barbara. Attorneys filed the brief on March 4, 2026. Barbara is an asylum seeker who escaped gang violence in Honduras and discovered she was pregnant in February 2025, WCNC reported. Barbara is one of three plaintiffs using pseudonyms in the class action suit, according to NPR.
Friend of the court briefs are filed by parties with relevant interest and expertise who are not involved in a lawsuit, according to Cornell Law School.
The Fourteenth Amendment states that every child born in the United States is a U.S. citizen, the friend of the court brief argues. FCNL and FGC joined 55 other faith groups in filing the brief. Other faith groups represented include Muslims, Jews, Episcopalians, Hindus, Baptists, Catholics, Church of England, Unitarian Universalists, and interfaith organizations.
Quakers have long supported religious freedom, the brief explains. Birthright citizenship prevents children from having to return to countries where their parents were persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Congregations represented in the amicus brief include members who have thrived in the United States and benefited from Constitutional guarantees.
“As recognized in amici’s religious texts, welcoming the stranger is a broadly shared and indelible ethic. The Citizenship Clause represents the apotheosis of this value by extending the same citizenship rights possessed by one’s own children to the children of the stranger,” the brief states.
Birthright citizenship provides Constitutional assurance that children born in the United States have the same “privileges, immunities and rights of citizenship regardless of parentage,” the brief states.
The freedom of religion guarantees in the First Amendment as well as the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment reinforce each other, according to the brief.
Congress enacted the Refugee Act of 1980 and the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act with broad public support, according to the brief.
Birthright citizenship is a source of membership in religious congregations, according to the brief. Approximately 30 percent of religious adherents in the United States are first- or second- generation Americans. First- and second-generation Americans account for 43 percent of Catholics and 69 percent of Orthodox Christians.
Trump v. Barbara would harm asylum seekers; many Friends’ families came to the United States as refugees and asylees, according to Barry Crossno, general secretary of Friends General Conference.
Had the justices favored Trump, millions of U.S.-born children would be rendered stateless, meaning they would be ineligible to work legally, collect social security, or access medical care, according to Crossno.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who represented the Trump administration, argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause did not apply to immigrants but only to formerly enslaved people and their children, according to court transcripts.
“A stateless child, they’d be in the same position as an illegal immigrant today,” explained Carol Nackenoff, Richter Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at Swarthmore College.
Most immigrants do not come to the United States to get citizenship for hypothetical future children, according to Nackenoff. Most people leave their home countries to flee persecution or to escape poverty.
Had the June 30 decision favored the Trump administration, it could have opened the possibility of the justices revisiting the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe, in which justices declared unconstitutional a Texas law that prevented state funds from being used to educate children who were undocumented immigrants, according to Nackenoff. The court ruled that children who are in the country without documentation are persons under the auspices of the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The court countered the argument that undocumented immigrants are not within the jurisdiction of the state because they entered the United States illegally.
Attorney Cecillia D. Wang, of the American Civil Liberties Union, represented Barbara, according to Oyez. Other organizations providing legal work for the plaintiff included the Legal Defense Fund, Asian Law Caucus, and Democracy Defenders Fund. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer represented the Trump Administration.
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