Trump v. Barbara

Majority — Roberts

Joined by: Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, Jackson

Chief Justice Roberts's majority reasoned that the Citizenship Clause codified the English common-law rule of jus soli (citizenship by birth on the soil), which was broad and included children of foreigners, including temporary visitors, with only narrow exceptions for diplomats, invading enemies, and tribal Indians. The Court traced this understanding through Dred Scott's rejection, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment's ratification, concluding the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" refers to the government's territorial power to govern people physically present, not to some heightened "allegiance" tied to domicile. The Court found the dissent's domicile-based theory unsupported by evidence from 1776-1868, noting domicile and citizenship are legally distinct concepts. It also read Wong Kim Ark as confirming this broad rule despite repeated references to the parents' domicile in that case, reasoning that the case's underlying analysis of the Clause's text and history cannot be reconciled with a domicile requirement. The majority directly rebutted Justice Thomas's argument by noting his and the Government's shifting, undated theories of when "allegiance" supposedly required domicile, and rejected Justice Alito's and Justice Kavanaugh's proposed ad hoc exceptions as inconsistent with their own stated principles.

Dissent reasoning

Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, argued that both the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Citizenship Clause required that a child be domiciled in the United States, not merely temporarily present, to be a citizen at birth, and that extensive post-ratification practice by the Executive Branch, Congress, courts, and scholars confirmed this domicile requirement for decades. He argued the majority's reliance on Lynch v. Clarke and dicta in Wong Kim Ark is historically unsupported, since Wong Kim Ark's actual holding was limited to parents who were domiciled here. Justice Alito, dissenting separately, argued the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means subject exclusively to U.S. power and not to any foreign power, so children of temporary visitors and many illegal immigrants remain tied to their parents' home country and are not covered, though he would treat Wong Kim Ark as reaching only parents who did everything possible to become American given the racial bar on their naturalization. Justice Gorsuch, dissenting, agreed with Thomas's domicile-based reading and Wong Kim Ark's limits, and would have rejected the facial challenge because the Executive Order is lawful at least as applied to true temporary visitors, though he expressed doubt about applying it to long-term unlawfully present residents.