Wisconsin Challenges Trump’s Order Ending Birthright Citizenship

Speaking at a violence prevention press conference Photo taken Oct. 13, 2021 by Jeramey Jannene.

The State of Wisconsin has joined a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump‘s controversial attempt to end birthright citizenship through executive order.

Attorney General Josh Kaul added Wisconsin as a plaintiff in the lawsuit Tuesday. In a joint statement with Gov. Tony Evers, Kaul and the governor argued the order was unconstitutional. It was released in a flurry of executive actions shortly after Trump took office and would strip U.S. citizenship from anyone born after Feb. 19, 2025 whose parents were not naturalized citizens or permanent residents at the time of their birth.

“The Constitution, federal law, and Supreme Court precedent all make clear that the children who would be impacted by this executive order are United States citizens,” Kaul said. “This attempt to deny them citizenship in blatant violation of the Constitution should be rejected.”

Wisconsin is one of 20 states with Democratic attorneys general suing the president and a handful of administration officials and federal agencies over the order. The suit, filed in Massachusetts, charges that Trump’s order is in violation of both the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

Trump’s order specifically directs the U.S. State Department, Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for the government’s deportation operations, to create policy consistent with an end to birthright citizenship.

The implications of the order are wide-reaching and deny children who otherwise would be U.S. citizens access to an array of federal programs, including Social Securitym while barring them from working legally and voting. Their ability to travel will be limited for a lack of documentation. The children “may never be able to naturalize, nor to obtain citizenship from any other nation” and will live under the constant threat of deportation, according to the complaint.

The order would also cause states to lose federal funding, according to the statement from Evers and Kaul. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, for example, “turn at least in part on the immigration status of the resident being served.”

“Attempting to deny citizenship to kids who were born in the United States of America is as egregious and wrong-headed as it is unconstitutional,” Gov. Evers said. “We must defend Americans’ constitutional rights, including the rights of kids who are born on U.S. soil, and that is exactly what we are doing today.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin has estimated there are more than 150,000 immigrants living in Wisconsin who do not have U.S. citizenship. “Their immigration status runs from permanent resident, DREAMER, refugee, to holders of work and student visas, as well as those who are undocumented,” according to a report by the organization released in 2022.

The complaint filed Tuesday states that thousands of children are born every year to parents who “lack legal status or have a lawful status on a temporary basis” in each of the states bringing the suit.

The order relies on an interpretation of just a few words in the 14th amendment: “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The clause comes in a sentence describing who qualifies for citizenship. Trump’s executive order seeks to disqualify persons born in the U.S. to parents without citizenship, or here on a temporary basis, from falling within the ambit of this clause and therefore deny them citizenship.

The 14th Amendment was ratified by 1868 in rejection of a U.S. Supreme Court‘s ruling that freed slaves and their descendants could not be citizens. The amendment has long been interpreted as granting citizenship to all persons born in the U.S. The Supreme Court affirmed this interpretation the same year in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, according to the National Constitution Center, a non-profit dedicated to constitutional study and education.

“President Trump now seeks to abrogate this well-established and longstanding Constitutional principle by executive fiat,” the attorneys general charge in their complaint.