Authored by John Velleco via Gun Owners of America,
This week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could redefine one of the most fundamental questions in American law: Who is a citizen of the United States?
Does birth on U.S. soil automatically confer citizenship, even when the parents owe allegiance to a foreign nation?
Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation, along with several others, have filed a Friend of the Court brief urging the Court to take a fresh look at that question. At issue are two cases, State of Washington v. Trump and Barbara v. Trump, challenging President Trump’s 2025 Executive Order, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.”
What interest do Second Amendment rights organizations have in asking the Court to review a case that on its face deals with immigration and the practice of so-called birthright citizenship?
The answer is simple and goes to the heart of who, precisely, constitutes a nation. A nation is defined by those who pledge loyalty to it, not by those who briefly cross its borders for the sole purpose of obtaining citizenship by birth. Citizenship must reflect genuine allegiance and lasting connection, or it becomes little more than an administrative label, stripped of substance. And the rights uniquely reserved for citizens, especially the right to keep and bear arms, gradually lose the constitutional footing needed to sustain and protect them.
The Trump executive order simply reaffirms a principle that was once widely understood but has been steadily obscured: citizenship is not an accident of geography, but a solemn bond of allegiance. It directs federal agencies not to treat as U.S. citizens those born here to parents who are neither American citizens nor lawful permanent residents. This policy aligns precisely with the text and original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” That second phrase, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” is not a throwaway clause. It was deliberately inserted to exclude from automatic citizenship those who owe allegiance to another country.
Opponents of the Executive Order rely on the assumption that any person born on U.S. soil, apart from two narrow exceptions, is automatically an American citizen. A reexamination of the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and its framers’ words shows that this assumption rests on shaky constitutional ground.
When Congress debated the amendment in 1866, Senator Jacob Howard explained it “will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens… but will include every other class of persons.” Senator Lyman Trumbull clarified that “subject to the jurisdiction” meant “not owing allegiance to anybody else.” Their intent was clear: the amendment was meant to ensure citizenship for freed slaves, not to create a perpetual magnet for illegal immigration or birth tourism.
Over the decades, that original understanding was gradually eroded by administrative habit and judicial drift. Judicial decisions and administrative practices have treated children born on U.S. soil to parents who are not citizens or permanent residents, including those here illegally or temporarily, as automatic U.S. citizens. That practice, unsupported by statute or constitutional text, has profound consequences.
The consequences extend far beyond immigration. Citizenship is the gateway to full political rights, responsibilities, and constitutional protections. Among these, the Second Amendment stands uniquely tied to the concept of citizenship. The Founders viewed the right to keep and bear arms as inseparable from the duties and privileges of free citizens, individuals who shared in the responsibility of defending their communities and preserving liberty.
When citizenship is detached from allegiance, the political understanding of “the people” who possess this right becomes blurred. Courts and policymakers then face pressure to reinterpret the Second Amendment in ways that weaken it for everyone. As Gun Owners of America has warned in its amicus brief, the Second Amendment does not erode all at once. It erodes gradually, as the definition of the political community itself is reshaped.
This is why the question before the Court is not merely about immigration policy. It is about the integrity of citizenship itself and the constitutional structure that depends on it.
It was the Administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt which expanded citizenship to include virtually anyone born here, and it is President Trump who wants to return us to our historical roots. When FDR redefined who is a citizen, he imbued them with the constitutional rights that belong only to citizens, including the Second Amendment. However, if illegal aliens have Second Amendment Rights given to them without any duty of allegiance, those rights for all of us can be expected to be quite weak indeed.
Restoring citizenship to its constitutional foundation does not require invention. It requires adherence to the text, history, and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress, not FDR and the federal agencies, possesses the authority to establish rules for naturalization. The American people, not executive policy, must determine who joins the political community.
President Trump’s executive order does not change the Constitution; it enforces it. It honors the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment framers and restores clarity to our national identity. The Court should overturn the misguided lower-court rulings, and restore the full meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
John Velleco is the Executive Vice President of Gun Owners of America.
