NAACP, Civil Rights Groups Urge the Supreme Court to Strike Down Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 27, 2026
Contact: Chyna Fields, cfields@naacpnet.org
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Supreme Court should strike down President Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship, according to an amicus brief filed by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Howard University School of Law's Civil Rights Clinic on behalf of the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, Equal Justice Society, the National Urban League, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
The groups call out the administration's attempt to narrowly restrict birthright citizenship based on parentage while wielding other civil rights laws to advance its ideological agenda. In their brief, the groups emphasize that, if upheld, the executive order would resurrect a horrific time in American history when only certain people could be declared a citizen by birth.
As explained in the brief, the executive order would further expose communities of color to the harmful policies of an administration with a disregard for the civil rights of immigrants of color, including immigrants who are U.S. citizens. Immigration enforcement tactics currently being carried out by the administration harken back to a time when newly freed Black people had to carry their manumission papers. A Supreme Court ruling upholding the executive order threatens to make immigrants of color even more vulnerable to civil rights abuses.
Derrick Johnson, NAACP President and CEO, said, "Birthright citizenship is not up for debate. This attack on the 14th Amendment is nothing short of an attempt to resurrect racist ideologies and erase protections that were constitutionally set in stone for all of us. We will not stand by as this administration attempts to relegate generations of Black and Brown people to second-class citizenship. The truth of our constitution must be upheld – and we cannot allow this erosion of our democracy."
Olivia Sedwick, counsel at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said, "This executive order is not only unconstitutional, but its framing is deeply ahistorical and regressive. If it is allowed to stand, this nation can no longer hold itself out to be the bastion of freedom and democracy to the world."
Mona Tawatao, legal director of the Equal Justice Society, said, "Birthright citizenship is the safeguard that keeps the United States from becoming a racialized caste society where the government decides who counts and who does not. It ensures that every child born here, no matter their race or their parents' status, enters our democracy as an equal. We must recognize and protect this long-enshrined fundamental right not as a technical rule, but as the constitutional expression of the multiracial democracy all our children deserve."
"Birthright citizenship is not a political bargaining chip. It is a constitutional guarantee," said Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters. "The administration's attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship is an attack on every American, especially Black Americans, and a dangerous escalation in the effort to redefine who belongs in our democracy."
Maya Wiley, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said, "This brief shouldn't be necessary, because the words of the 14th Amendment are plain and clear. If you are born here, you are a citizen here. As we explain, those words were written to ensure that there would never again be a class of people born here denied their rights as citizens, no matter their race or ethnicity. The meaning of the Amendment's protection of birthright citizenship is as plain now as it was at the time the Amendment was ratified. The attack on birthright citizenship is also plain. It is plainly wrong. It is plainly unconstitutional. It is plainly un-American. We are a nation built by the many to create the one – one country made up of diverse citizens whose rights, if we allow this administration to violate them, will be the destruction of what we now celebrate in the two-hundred and fifty years of a nation that is proud of its multi-racial democracy and that holds dear and undeniably the inalienable rights of all the citizens of this great nation. Because we are only great when our rights are respected."
Marc H. Morial, National Urban League President and CEO, said, "The Constitution could not be clearer: for more than a century, the 14th Amendment has guaranteed that every child born on American soil is a United States citizen — a principle affirmed repeatedly by the Supreme Court and essential to our nation's identity. Attempts to end birthright citizenship through executive action ignore settled law, distort the meaning of the Citizenship Clause, and revive the same dangerous impulses that once denied equal protection to entire groups of people. The Court must reject this unlawful overreach and uphold the Amendment's promise, which has anchored civil rights progress since it overturned the injustices of the Dred Scott era."
The brief debunks the Trump administration's claim that the Reconstruction Congress intended birthright citizenship to only apply to freed slaves and their children. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act Civil Rights Act of 1866 clearly grant birthright citizenship to all people born in the United States, regardless of the legal status of the parents. As the brief details, any contrary reading of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause or the citizenship clause in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 is patently and unequivocally incorrect.
President Trump issued the executive order on birthright citizenship on his first day back in office, on January 20, 2025.
The amicus brief is in support of the nationwide class action challenging the executive order. The lawsuit was brought by ACLU, Legal Defense Fund, Asian Law Caucus, Democracy Defenders Fund, ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of Maine, and ACLU of Massachusetts.
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The NAACP advocates, agitates, and litigates for the civil rights due to Black America. Our legacy is built on the foundation of grassroots activism by the biggest civil rights pioneers of the 20th century and is sustained by 21st-century activists. From classrooms and courtrooms to city halls and Congress, our network of members across the country works to secure the social and political power that will end race-based discrimination. That work is rooted in racial equity, civic engagement, and supportive policies and institutions for all marginalized people. We are committed to a world without racism where Black people enjoy equitable opportunities in thriving communities.
NOTE: The Legal Defense Fund – also referred to as the NAACP-LDF - was founded in 1940 as a part of the NAACP, but now operates as a completely separate entity.