Birthright Citizenship Fight Moves to Capitol Hill After Supreme Court Decision
By: Eric Wessan | The Federalist
Sen. Jim Banks has offered a text-and-precedent-bound response to a decision his opponents assumed had ended the debate.
When the Supreme Court decided Trump v. Barbara on June 30, 2026, opponents of birthplace-citizenship reform declared the fight over. But that disappointing decision was not the end of attempts to reform the system. It was merely the “end of the beginning.” Sen. Jim Banks read Barbara as a legislative map. His new Citizenship Act follows the road Wong Kim Ark charted.
Barbara held that President Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional by locking in birthplace citizenship’s definition from a much older case. That 1898 case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, laid out three categories of people whose children are not...