National child advocacy organization files amicus brief in Trump v. Barbara, urging the Court to affirm birthright citizenship as a fundamental constitutional right.

First Focus on Children has filed an amicus curiae brief in Trump v. Barbara (No. 25-365), urging the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm that birthright citizenship is a fundamental constitutional right guaranteed to every baby born in the United States. The brief, filed yesterday alongside leading child advocacy organizations and nationally recognized experts in child health, psychology, and rights, makes clear that President Trump’s Executive Order 14160, which purports to end birthright citizenship for hundreds of thousands of children born each year, would cause immediate, irreparable, and lasting harm to babies and children across America.

“This isn’t just an immigration case — it’s fundamentally a case about babies and children,” said Bruce Lesley, President of First Focus on Children. “The Fourteenth Amendment’s focus is on the child, not the parents. What’s at stake here is whether babies born in America will have the health, safety, security, and dignity of citizenship — or whether they will be punished for circumstances entirely beyond their control.”

Read the full brief

What the Brief Argues

The brief presents three core arguments on behalf of America’s children:

  • Every baby would be harmed — not just those targeted by the Order. Implementation of the Executive Order would subject every single child born in the United States to new paperwork burdens, bureaucratic delays, and complex documentation requirements. Nearly 21 million Americans lack ready access to the documents this Order would require. Families facing poverty, language barriers, same-sex partnerships, IVF conception, surrogacy arrangements, or homelessness would face impossible obstacles, even when their baby is fully entitled to citizenship. Babies are the group targeted for harm under this Order.
  • Children’s health and well-being would suffer immediately and for life. The threat of ending birthright citizenship is already causing documented harm, driving immigrant mothers away from prenatal care and hospital births. The brief draws on groundbreaking research showing that chronic, early-life stress from immigration enforcement, which the Order would dramatically intensify, dysregulates children’s developing brains, elevates cortisol levels over time, and causes lasting impairments in emotional regulation, memory, and cognitive development. Children denied citizenship also face loss or delay of access to Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and food programs at birth — the most critical and vulnerable moment in one’s life — with compounding consequences throughout their lives.
  • Many babies would be rendered stateless — with nowhere to go. Children born to parents from nations that do not recognize birthright citizenship by blood, or whose parents’ home countries are too dangerous to return to, would be left with no nationality and no country willing to claim them. The brief emphasizes that no federal law defines or protects stateless persons, leaving these children exposed to detention, deportation, and a lifetime of institutional exclusion.

A Coalition Speaking for Children

First Focus on Children is joined on the brief by the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), Children Now, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, and four nationally recognized scholars and clinicians in child health and psychology: Dr. Lisa Fortuna (UC Riverside), Dr. Hector Adames (The Chicago School), Warren Binford (University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine). Dr. Nayeli Y. Chavez-Dueñas (The Chicago School), and Dr. Maryam Jernigan-Noesi (Jernigan & Associates Consulting, Inc.). The brief was authored by Mary Kelly Persyn of Persyn Law & Policy, who served as counsel of record, and was filed as the Supreme Court prepares to hear argument in one of the most consequential children’s rights cases in a generation.

“Citizenship is not just a legal status — it is, as the Supreme Court has said, ‘the right to have rights,’” Lesley added. “Strip that away, and you create a permanent underclass of children condemned to live in the shadows, not for anything they did, but for being born. That is not who we are. That is not what the Constitution allows.”

The brief is informed, in part, by First Focus on Children’s advocacy and published analysis on birthright citizenship, including Do No Harm: Why Ending Birthright Citizenship Puts ALL Babies and Children at Risk and From Cradle to Limbo: The Immediate and Long-Term Dangers of Repealing Birthright Citizenship for Children.

The Case

Trump v. Barbara reaches the Supreme Court after federal courts at every level blocked the Executive Order from taking effect. The case presents the Court with the question of whether President Trump’s executive order lawfully reinterprets the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause to deny citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are undocumented or hold only temporary legal status. The brief urges the Court to affirm the decision below and hold that all babies born in the United States are citizens by birthright — of equal status, inherent worth, and full dignity.