CALIFORNIA — A sweeping executive order signed by President Donald Trump in January 2025 seeking to end birthright citizenship has triggered a multistate legal battle that now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court, with California Attorney General Rob Bonta co-leading efforts to block the order as unconstitutional.
Immediately after Executive Order 14160 was issued in January 2025, several states, including California, Washington and Massachusetts, filed their own direct lawsuits. The order was signed and introduced by President Donald Trump in an attempt to end birthright citizenship, a human right granting automatic citizenship to children born to undocumented parents and visa holders in the U.S. Legal battles continue into spring 2026.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta co-led a lawsuit challenging the executive order and secured nationwide injunctions to prevent it from taking effect.
The lawsuit, supported by twenty-four U.S. attorneys, repeated injunctions and an amicus brief filed in Trump v. Barbara is now in the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision at hand is whether a centuries-old understanding of U.S. citizenship will remain a constitutional right for children of undocumented immigrants in the United States.
The heart of the dispute lies in the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
In a press release, Attorney General Bonta highlighted the history of the 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the Supreme Court maintained that children born on U.S. soil are citizens, regardless of their parents’ immigrant status.
Attorney General Bonta emphasized the repercussions of the potential revocation of birthright citizenship. This involves the demographic impact, potentially rendering some babies almost immediately “stateless,” belonging to no country at all.
Those affected include children of undocumented immigrants, children of temporary visa holders, children of DACA and Temporary Protected Status recipients, and children of asylum seekers. According to the press release, California alone has an estimated 24,500 children born annually who would be stripped of their citizenship rights under the new order.
“These children would lose their most basic rights and be forced to live under the threat of deportation. They would lose eligibility for a wide range of federal benefits programs. They would lose their ability obtain a Social Security number and, as they age, to work lawfully. And they would lose their right to vote, serve on juries, and run for certain offices,” Bonta stated.
Along with the impact on children and families, many U.S. states would also face potentially devastating consequences to their budgets, causing both direct and indirect harm to resident health and well-being.
A news release by the California Department of Justice emphasized the potential impact, stating, “The executive order would also severely harm California and other states by jeopardizing federal funding for essential programs that they administer, such as Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program; these programs are conditioned on the citizenship and immigration status of the children they serve. Yet, these children would still require healthcare, education, and social services, forcing states to absorb the costs.”
Despite substantial evidence supporting the preservation of birthright citizenship in the United States, the fight to preserve constitutional rights continues. Backed by New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaiʻi, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and the City and County of San Francisco, Bonta’s fight does not anticipate surrender.
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Categories: Breaking News Immigration State of California Tags: 14th Amendment Birthright Citizenship IMmigration Policy President Donald Trump Rob Bonta Supreme Court Trump Administration U.S. Supreme Court