Can Trump revoke birthright citizenship?

The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, after the close of the Civil War. The 13th Amendment had abolished slavery in 1865, while the 14th settled the question of the citizenship of freed, American-born former slaves.

Previous Supreme Court decisions, like Dred Scott v Sandford in 1857, had decided that African Americans could never be US citizens. The 14th Amendment overrode that.

In 1898, the US Supreme Court affirmed that birthright citizenship applies to the children of immigrants in the case of Wong Kim Ark v United States. Wong was a 24-year-old child of Chinese immigrants who was born in the US, but denied re-entry when he returned from a visit to China. Wong successfully argued that because he was born in the US, his parent’s immigration status did not impact the application of the 14th Amendment.

“Wong Kim Ark vs United States affirmed that regardless of race or the immigration status of one’s parents, all persons born in the United States were entitled to all of the rights that citizenship offered,” writes Erika Lee, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. “The court has not re-examined this issue since then.”