On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” It declard that the children of certain noncitizen mothers would no longer be considered U.S. citizens at birth unless the father was a citizen or lawful permanent resident. Specifically, it targeted U.S.-born children whose mothers were either unlawfully present or in the country only temporarily, including those on tourist, student, or work visas.
Many suits were filed to block the implementation of the Executive Order. One was a class action suit was by the immigrant-rights organization CASA and others, in the federal District Court for District of Maryland. This suit and others obtained an injunction halting enforcement of the Executive Order.
The Supreme Court’s lifted the injunction in its decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc. on June 27, 2025. The majority questioned the pursuit of a nationwide class action. It was skeptical about whether the plaintiffs, particularly plaintiffs such as CASA, could represent the interests of a broad class of unborn children potentially affected by the Order.
CASE et al immediately reformulated its legal strategy and filed an amended class action suit on the same day of the Supreme Court decision. They abandoned, at least temporarily, the pursuit of a broad nationwide class action. The amended complaint (8:25-cv-00201-DLB) focused on a narrower set of plaintiffs with clearly articulated, individualized harms. Plaintiffs included two non-profit groups, CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, along with five pregnant women referred to by pseudonyms (Maribel, Juana, Trinidad Garcia, Monica, Liza)
CASA’s argument summarized
The complaint asserts that the foundational American legal principle of jus soli—the right of the soil—establishing that all persons born within U.S. territory, regardless of their parents’ immigration status, are citizens at birth. It contends that this principle, enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, was adopted specifically to prevent discriminatory denials of citizenship based on ancestry or legal status, such as those at the heart of the infamous Dred Scott decision. United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) is invoked.
On the matter of “subject to the jurisdiction” provision of the 14th Amendment, “At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, “subject to the jurisdiction” was a commonly used phrase with “a clear meaning and scope.” ….And nearly everyone present in a sovereign’s territory, including noncitizens, is subject to that sovereign’s power of “governing or legislating,” entitled to that sovereign’s protection, and thus “subject to the jurisdiction” of that sovereign.”….“Regardless of the immigration status of their parents, children born in the United States are undoubtedly “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” at the moment of their birth. Both federal and state governments today extend to children born in the United States—as well as their parents while physically present in the United States—the equal protection of the laws and assert regulatory authority over them.”
The plaintiffs include organizations plaintiffs, CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), and individual pregnant women who fear that their children will be denied citizenship under the Executive Order. These individuals face the prospect of statelessness for their children, unequal treatment of siblings born under different administrations, and legal uncertainty that could bar their children from education, healthcare, voting, and the ability to remain in their country of birth. “If denied United States citizenship, U.S.-born babies may lack citizenship in any country, leaving them stateless, “a condition deplored in the international community of democracies.” (Trop, 356 U.S. at 101.) Without a homeland, a stateless person’s “very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself.”
Also, the suit emphasizes the societal and economic costs of this policy, noting that birthright citizenship has historically contributed to U.S. prosperity by ensuring full integration and civic participation of native-born children, regardless of their parents’ legal status. Plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that the Executive Order is unlawful and unconstitutional.