Quick Takeaways
- Supreme Court prohibits federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions for immigration-related Executive Orders
- Relief only available to litigants that are party to the lawsuit that secured the injunction
- 28 states have a four-week window to file suit or join class action to protect birthright citizenship
- DOJ prioritizing ten categories of naturalized citizens for citizenship revocation
In June, the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued directives that may at least temporarily create immense uncertainty regarding the acquisition and retention of U.S. Citizenship. With these developments, the federal government, which has claimed its top priority to be the detention and deportation of migrants with criminal convictions or charges, may, absent further litigation, proceed with refusing U.S. Citizenship to children born in the United States on a state-by-state basis while also U.S. Citizens of that designation after the fact. These expansions into birthright citizenship for children born in the United States and the prioritization of denaturalizing American Citizens represent a new chapter in federal policy and another attack on the U.S. immigrant community.
Birthright Citizenship Explained
By way of background, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed in the wake of the Civil War in response to the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision that denied U.S. Citizenship to individuals of African descent (and subsequently codified at 8 U.S. Code § 1401) grants U.S. Citizenship to, amongst others, any person born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. As such, common exceptions to birthright, or jus solis, citizenship, are foreign diplomats and other dignitaries customarily afforded diplomatic immunity and therefore not subject to U.S. jurisdiction. However, according to its plain language and the contemporaneous understanding of its framers, the 14th Amendment has never been used to deny U.S. Citizenship to a child born in the United States to undocumented parents, much less to parents who are nonimmigrant visa holders.
Trump Executive Order and Ensuing Litigation
Yet, this widely-held and universally-applied interpretation of the 14th Amendment has faced criticism from the Republican Party writ large and President Trump in particular, who have collectively sought to recognize the 14th Amendment as not granting U.S. Citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants who are born in the United States. Thus, on the first day of his second term, President Trump issued an Executive Order offering an alternative, and more expansive, interpretation of the 14th Amendment: that a person may be born in the United States but not be subject to U.S. jurisdiction when the child’s mother is either undocumented or on a temporary visa, and the father is neither a U.S. Citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident.
According to this interpretation, a child born within the United States to a U.S. Citizen of Lawful Permanent Resident mother or a child with a U.S. Citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident father would receive U.S. Citizenship at birth. But, say, a child born in the United States with two undocumented parents, or two nonimmigrant (e.g., H-1B) parents, would not be U.S. Citizens at birth.
Trump indicated he would be taking this step upon re-entering office, giving prospective litigants sufficient forewarning to prepare and file lawsuits challenging the Executive Order on constitutional grounds. A federal court in Massachusetts issuing a nationwide injunction halting the Administration from implementing the Executive Order while the parties litigated the constitutional questions in-play. Recent memory provides numerous examples of using nationwide injunctions to block immigration-related Executive Orders declared by Democratic and Republican Administrations, including Trump 1.0’s initial Travel Bans in 2017 and Obama’s effort to expand DACA and introduce DAPA in 2015. However, the Trump Administration argued that these injunctions constituted overreach on the part of federal courts and that injunctive relief should be restricted to the parties of the case.
CASA v. Trump Decision: No Nationwide Injunctions of Executive Action
On June 27, 2025, the Court agreed with the Trump Administration’s argument regarding this form of extraordinary relief, ruling that nationwide injunctions exceeded the scope and authority of federal district courts, which SCOTUS deemed to be restricted to grant relief from federal policies to those parties who brought the lawsuit or to parties who fall under a class action lawsuit.
Impact of SCOTUS Ruling: Inconsistent Restrictions on Birthright Citizenship
Thus, an injunction issued in Massachusetts in response to a suit brought by one or more individuals will not prevent the government from enforcing the enjoined actions against individuals who were not party to the suit.
In addition to individual or classes of immigrants, at this time, 22 states have sued the Administration on behalf of their residents and secured injunctions against the Executive Order. These states are:
| Arizona | California | Colorado | Connecticut | Delaware | Hawaii |
| Illinois | Maine | Maryland | Massachusetts | Michigan | Minnesota |
| Nevada | New Jersey | New Mexico | New York | North Carolina | Oregon |
| Rhode Island | Vermont | Washington | Wisconsin |
Likewise, the ACLU of Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, along with other immigrants’ rights organizations, filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit on June 30, yet the Federal Rules of Procedure governing class-action lawsuits may protract this process for weeks or months to come.
Thus, unless the remaining 28 states file suit, or a federal court certifies the aforementioned class-action lawsuit’s class and issues a nationwide injunction, birthright citizenship as we have known it for approximately 160 years will cease in more than half of the United States as soon as July 27, 2025. At that time, for example, a child born in Indiana to parents in L status who reside in Illinois would nevertheless not acquire U.S. Citizenship at birth, while a child of two undocumented immigrants born in Massachusetts would acquire U.S. Citizenship at birth. The result: a piece-meal system of birthright citizenship riddled with inconsistencies and dependent on state lines that contradicts the well-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment and causes potentially irreparable harm to untold sums of children born in the United States and their families.
DOJ Memo Prioritizing Denaturalization of U.S. Citizens
Whereas the Supreme Court has at least temporarily opened the door for the Administration to deny U.S. Citizenship to certain individuals born in the United States in the first instance, the U.S. Department of Justice is ramping-up efforts on the back end to denaturalize current U.S. Citizens. According to the DOJ Memo issued June 11, 2025, denaturalizing certain U.S. Citizens is one of five issues Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed DOJ’s Civil Division to prioritize. The U.S. government already possesses the capacity to denaturalize U.S. Citizens under Section 340 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. § 1451(a)). As such, the DOJ’s Memo’s does not fundamentally alter the grounds on which the government may revoke U.S. Citizenship; rather, it primarily delineates ten categories of naturalized U.S. Citizens whose denaturalization the Department will prioritize, including individuals who engaged in human rights violations, criminal gang activity, and financial and/or immigration fraud. That being said, the emphasis on broader categories within these priorities, such as individuals who are connected to pending criminal charges, those who pose a potential danger to national security, and any other cases that the DOJ “determines to be sufficiently important to pursue,” coupled with the Administration’s already expanded rubric for characteristics showing someone’s gang activity, could further widen DOJ’s aperture with respect to pursuing denaturalization efforts.
As a reminder, only a federal court may formally revoke a U.S. Citizen’s citizenship. Yet, it is equally important to remember that like most immigration matters in federal courts, denaturalization proceedings are civil, not criminal, meaning the government has a lower burden of proof and need not guarantee the respondent legal representation. Likewise, an individual forced to relinquish their prior citizenship to become a U.S. Citizen will become a stateless person post-denaturalization. And once a U.S. Citizen has been stripped of their U.S. Citizenship and returned to being a U.S. Lawful Permanent Resident, the government would be free to initiate removal proceedings against that person or even pursue other civil/criminal charges available.
With the recent Supreme Court decision and DOJ Memo, U.S. Citizens both born in the United States and naturalized have come under the increased scrutiny of federal agencies and immigration enforcement actions. If you have any questions regarding your U.S. Citizenship or status, please do not hesitate to contact our office to speak with an immigration attorney.
This article is co-authored by Sidney Sponer, a rising third-year law student at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. She is a summer 2025 intern with Green and Spiegel, U.S.
