Vol. 42, No. 08
08/01/2026
The Myth of Birthright Citizenship
On June 30, 2026, in Trump v. Barbara, a divided Supreme Court held that children born on U.S. soil to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth. On July 8, 2026, the president announced that he will ask the Court to rehear the case. Joe Wolverton II, J.D., The John Birch Society’s constitutional law scholar, first published this refutation of birthright citizenship in May 2025. The Court has now enshrined the very myth he refuted. Wolverton’s answer to that myth, and to the Court, follows, and includes material from his original article.
AT A GLANCE
• In Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s executive order repudiating birthright citizenship.
• Trump has announced that he will ask the Supreme Court to rehear the case.
• The Supreme Court has not granted a rehearing in an argued case since 1965, and has reversed itself in a rehearing only once.
• This article looks at the language of the 14th Amendment and the intent of its framers to show that birthright citizenship is a myth.
On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States read the plain text of the 14th Amendment, read the men who wrote it, and chose to believe neither. In Trump v. Barbara, the Court struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order of January 25, 2005 — “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which repudiated so-called birthright citizenship — and decreed that the children of aliens unlawfully or temporarily present on our soil are citizens the instant they draw breath. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, closed his opinion with a flourish:
Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights, to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to “every free-born person in this land.” We keep that promise today.
That is not true. The Framers of the 14th Amendment made no such promise to the children of those who owe their allegiance to a foreign power. The Court did not keep a promise. It rewrote one.
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