In Trump v. Barbara, U.S. Sup.Ct. Slip Op. of June 30, 2026, the United States Supreme Court declared that all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States, excepting only 1) those persons born to diplomatic personnel from other countries, 2) those persons born to armed invaders of the United States, and 3) possibly those persons born to Native Americans and who live among their parents’ fellow Native Americans under Native American tribal laws. The Court ruled that the first sentence of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established that law and permitted no other exceptions to it. Accordingly, the Court invalidated Executive Order No. 14160 issued by the President of the United States, where he declared that there were further exceptions to the Constitution’s birthright citizenship rule, particularly for children born to parents who are unlawfully present in the United States, and for children born to parents who are lawfully present but only for a designated and limited period of time.
The first sentence of Section 1 to the 14th Amendment reads as follows:
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.
In his Executive Order, the President had claimed that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excluded children born to illegal immigrants in the United States, and also excluded children born to temporary visitors to the United States from birthright citizenship. The Court disagreed, opining that the power of the federal government, i.e., its “jurisdiction,” extended to every person within the borders of the United States, except for the three categories of individuals described above.[1]
In 1868,[2] the drafters and the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment had no foresight of the massive immigration problems, or the casual foreign travel problems, troubling the United States in the 21st Century. In 1868, there were little or no restrictions on immigration or travel by foreigners to the United States. When called upon to interpret and apply the language of law written without consideration of facts that might arise in the future, all a court-of-law can legitimately do is to apply the language of the law to those facts to the extent any accepted usage of the language at the time of its adoption still applies.[3] When ambiguity remains, then the present-day court should apply the usage that is most consonant with the evident purpose of the language.[4] The evident purpose of language written long ago by people who can no longer speak for themselves can accurately be discerned only by the documentary context, and the historical context in which the language was used.[5]
For the most part, the Court’s ruling in The Trump v. Barbara Case follows the text of the 14th Amendment as written. The ruling also follows the evident purpose of the 14th Amendment, which was to overrule the Opinions in the Court’s Dred Scott Case that seemed to remain untouched by the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, in 1865. In those contexts, “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States simply meant “subject to the [civil or non-military power] of the United States. Even today, most, but not all babies born within the United States’ borders are subject to that “power,” at least until they leave the United States.
The one problem in that analysis is found in the word “reside” at the end of the Amendment’s first sentence. That sentence, as a whole, implies the necessity of residing in the United States when the birth or naturalization takes place. To “reside” somewhere means “To dwell permanently or for a considerable time, to have one’s settled or usual home in or at a particular place.”[6] When a temporarily authorized visitor to the United States, such as a so-called “birth tourist,” returns to her home country together with her newborn baby, before her authorization to visit expires, the baby was arguably not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States when it was born. From that logic, it can reasonably be said that that baby was not eligible for automatic birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The Court rejected that logic, but the evidentiary grounds for that idea, i.e., the complete first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, does not clearly support that rejection. Reading the first sentence as whole, it implies an element of the baby’s own residency somewhere in the United States when it is born. A “birth tourist” or other pregnant woman with only a temporary pass to be in the United States cannot automatically pass along a legal characteristic that she does not have herself, i.e., the characteristic of residency in the United States, to her newborn baby. On the other hand, a pregnant woman from a foreign country who has established her own residency in the United States when she gives birth can and does pass along that status to her baby, giving the United States “jurisdiction” over both of them.
The President’s Executive Order might have worked to stop what has been called “birth tourism,” if it had come to the Court in the form of an Act of Congress invoking the foregoing logic. The President has no authority himself to enact legislation, or to authoritatively interpret the United States Constitution. Under our republican (lower case) Constitution, those authorities lie with the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government.[7] Legislation by Congress cannot amend the Constitution. Under the Court’s ruling in Trump v. Barbara, the three exceptions to birthright citizenship noted above are the only ones as a matter of Constitutional Law. And that law should and will stand as the law until The Barbara Case is overruled, or the 14th Amendment itself is amended. For now, “all” children who are “born” in the United States are citizens of the United States unless they fall within one of The Barbara Case’s three exceptions.
/s/ Dan D. Rhea
[1] See “Jurisdiction, N., Sense 1.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, June 2026, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1183104968.
[2] The 14th Amendment was added to the United States Constitution in 1868, three years after the conclusion of the Civil War, and eleven years after the Supreme Court’s decision in The Dred Scott Case that helped to start that War. For these facts, see the Supreme Court’s Opinions in The Slaughter-House Cases, 77 U.S. 273 (1869).
[3] See Scalia and Gardner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, Thomson/West (2012).
[4] Ibid.
[5] See Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England (Introduction § 2) Oxford University Press (1758).
[6] “Reside,V.(1), Sense 2.b.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, June 2026, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/4056973193.
[7] U.S. Const., Art.I, Section 1; Art. III, Section 1.
CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS 
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