ACLU Prepares for Supreme Court Fight on Birthright Citizenship

The ACLU’s Cecillia Wang is set to challenge the Trump administration next month in a case that could reshape the scope of birthright citizenship in the United States.

Wang, the group’s national legal director, will urge the justices to reaffirm the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that children born in the US to foreign nationals are citizens under the Constitution. Wang said that decision has become the foundation of post-Reconstruction America.

“Our entire country has been built on the basis of birthright citizenship,” Wang said. “To reinterpret, or overturn—which the government is really asking them to do—would shatter the foundation of American life.”

The Supreme Court will hear arguments April 1, with the government defending an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that would deny citizenship to children born in the US when neither parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident.

The solicitor general’s office has argued the court need not formally overturn Wong Kim Ark to rule in favor of the administration, contending that courts and government officials have misapplied the decision for more than a century.

High Stakes

The case is a return to Wang’s roots at the American Civil Liberties Union. She spent more than a decade with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, including five years as its director.

“I’m one of countless millions of second-generation Americans for whom the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment is very meaningful,” Wang said. “And there are many, many millions more, tens of millions of people, who have an ancestor who was a citizen of the United States because of the 14th Amendment.”

Wang clerked for Justices Harry Blackmun and Stephen Breyer, as well as on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She most recently led the ACLU’s Center for Democracy before being named national legal director in 2024.

While at the Immigrants’ Rights Project, Wang led two successful civil rights suits against former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio over allegations of racial profiling and unlawful detention targeting Latinos. During Trump’s first term she worked with ACLU teams on several high-profile cases, including successful challenges to the administration’s family separation policy and an effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

“There’s a merging of how I feel personally about this case with how millions of Americans feel about this case,” Wang said of the birthright litigation. “What the executive order does is profoundly counter to this fundamentally American principle that all of us born in this country are American citizens, one and all, and that we have equal rights as citizens.”

The upcoming argument will be Wang’s second appearance before the justices. She previously argued in 2018 in Nielsen v. Preap, a case addressing mandatory detention for certain noncitizens facing removal.

In preparation, Wang said she has been digging into arguments surrounding the ratification of the 14th Amendment and British common law—where American birthright citizenship, originates.

She’s also focused on the multitude of amicus briefs filed in the case. Her clients have drawn a broad array of support, including from the libertarian Cato Institute, the Society for the Rule of Law—whose members include former officials in the Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump administrations—and Yale Law professor Akhil Reed Amar.

Speaking Their Language

Wang will likely face questions about whether the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment rewards violations of immigration law and why the court shouldn’t recognize additional exceptions beyond those historically applied to children of foreign diplomats and hostile occupying forces, Amar said.

“One advantage she has is to hopefully read the room, because Sauer has to go first,” Amar said, referring to Solicitor General John Sauer.

“She can see just how hard the middle of the room is on him. If Thomas and Alito go after him, well, that’s a great sign,” he added, referring to conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Wang said the ACLU has brought in lawyers with broad experience to assist in preparation through moot court sessions. But, she said, she doesn’t see this as a case with “a conservative side and a liberal side.”

Instead, Wang said, the case asks whether a president may “re-engineer” the meaning of the 14th Amendment to reflect current policy preferences.

“That is not how the court reads the Constitution,” Wang said. “And it is precisely what the 14th Amendment was designed to prevent. As the court said in Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967, it is undeniable from the text of the 14th Amendment that the Framers wanted to put citizenship beyond the power of any governmental unit to destroy.”

The justices are expected to rule by July.

The case is Trump v. Barbara, U.S., No. 25-365, scheduled for oral argument 4/1/26.