The Trump administration filed a second appeal asking the Supreme Court to look at whether President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order is constitutional.
The federal government’s new petition in Trump v. Barbara was docketed by the court on Sept. 29.
The new petition was docketed after the government filed a petition in a related case, Trump v. State of Washington, with the Supreme Court on Sept. 26.
Trump’s Executive Order 14160, signed on Jan. 20, states that “the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”
According to the order, an individual born in the United States is not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” if that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the country and the individual’s father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the person’s birth.
It also states that the privilege of U.S. citizenship does not apply to an individual whose mother’s presence was lawful but temporary and whose father was neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at the time of that individual’s birth.
The executive order has prompted debate over the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which states, “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.”
The Supreme Court previously partly allowed the executive order on June 27 in a decision that said universal injunctions likely exceed the courts’ authority.
The 6–3 decision in that case, Trump v. CASA Inc., didn’t provide a definitive ruling on the constitutionality of the president’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship but instead focused on whether three nationwide injunctions blocking the policy could stand.
In the new petition, Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to review a preliminary injunction blocking the executive order.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante of New Hampshire issued the injunction on July 10 that paused the executive order and allowed the respondents in the Supreme Court case to move forward with a class action against Trump’s birthright citizenship policy. The injunction halts the policy while the lawsuit over it plays out in court.
The lead respondent in the Supreme Court case is identified simply as “Barbara,” a citizen of Honduras who lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three young children. She filed an asylum application that is now pending with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and has lived in the United States since 2024, Laplante said in his order.
Barbara’s husband, who is the father of her children, is neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident. They are expecting their fourth child. Barbara intends to apply on her child’s behalf for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, previously known as food stamps, Medicaid, and other benefits that U.S. citizens are eligible for, the judge said.
Laplante said the government’s argument that blocking the executive order would cause irreparable harm are “unconvincing to the court,” especially considering that the president advanced the policy unilaterally without legislation and public debate.
The birthright citizenship policy is “of highly questionable constitutionality that would deny citizenship to many thousands of individuals previously granted citizenship under an indisputably longstanding policy,” the judge said.
Sauer said in the new petition that the lower courts have misinterpreted United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), a key Supreme Court decision that held that the children of lawful permanent residents were entitled to citizenship under the citizenship clause.
He said the clause does not bestow citizenship on the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens.
Supreme Court precedents hold that the clause covers children who are “completely subject” to the “political jurisdiction” of the United States, which means “that they owe ‘direct and immediate allegiance’ to the Nation and may claim its protection,” Sauer said.
In the Trump v. Washington petition, Sauer asked the Supreme Court to review two lower court rulings that halted the executive order.
“The lower courts’ decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the President and his Administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Sauer said.
“Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled July 23 in the case that the executive order was “invalid because it contradicts the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment’s grant of citizenship to ‘all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
Before that, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled against the executive order on Feb. 6. That court granted a preliminary injunction blocking the order because it “subjects” the states challenging the order to “immediate economic and administrative harms.”
The court said the executive order would compel the states to disqualify many people it considers citizens and in the process lose federal funds they would otherwise be eligible to receive. The states are likely to succeed on their claim that the executive order violates the 14th Amendment, the court added.
The Supreme Court directed Barbara’s attorneys and the attorney general of Washington state to file a reply to the respective petitions by Oct. 29.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is on Barbara’s legal team, and to the office of Washington’s attorney general.
No replies were received by publication time.
Sam Dorman contributed to this report.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Oct. 1, 2025, in The Epoch Times.