[3] Wong Kim Ark was the first Supreme Court case to decide on the status of children born in the United States to alien parents.

[22][23] One provision of this law declared as citizens not only the freed slaves, but "all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed".

[32] Although most Senators agreed that birthright citizenship should not be extended to Native Americans, a majority saw no need to clarify the issue,[36] and Doolittle's proposal was voted down.

[40] Elizabeth Wydra, chief counsel of the Constitutional Accountability Center (a progressive think tank[41]), argues that both supporters and opponents of the Citizenship Clause in 1866 shared the understanding that it would automatically grant citizenship to all persons born in the United States (except children of foreign ministers and invading armies)[42]—an interpretation shared by Texas Solicitor General James C.

[43] Richard Aynes, dean of the University of Akron School of Law, takes a different view, proposing that the Citizenship Clause had "consequences which were unintended by the framers".

[46] The question of whether the Citizenship Clause applied to persons born in the United States to Chinese immigrants first came before the courts in an 1884 case, In re Look Tin Sing.

[47] Lucy E. Salyer, a history professor at the University of New Hampshire,[50] writes that Justice Field "issued an open invitation to all lawyers in the area to give their opinions on the constitutional questions involved" in the case.

[60][61] Like many other immigrants, Chinese were drawn to the United States—initially to participate in the California Gold Rush of 1849, then moving on to railroad construction, farming, and work in cities.

[46] According to Salyer, the San Francisco attorney George Collins had tried to persuade the federal Justice Department to bring a Chinese birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court.

[88] With the assistance of legal representation by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association,[89] Wong Kim Ark challenged the refusal to recognize his birth claim to U.S. citizenship, and a petition for a writ of habeas corpus was filed on his behalf in federal district court.

[90][91] The arguments presented before District Judge William W. Morrow[92] centered on which of two competing interpretations of the phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof in the Citizenship Clause should govern a situation involving a child born in the United States to alien parents.

[123] Quoting approvingly from an 1812 case, The Schooner Exchange v. M'Faddon, in which Chief Justice John Marshall said, "The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute"[124][125][126]—and agreeing with the district judge who had heard Wong's original habeas corpus petition that comments in the Slaughterhouse Cases about the citizenship status of children born to non-citizen parents did not constitute a binding precedent[59]—the Court ruled that Wong was a U.S. citizen from birth, via the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the restrictions of the Chinese Exclusion Act did not apply to him.

"[128][129] The majority opinion referred to Calvin's Case (1608) as stating the fundamental common law principle that all people born within the King's "allegiance" were subjects, including children of "aliens in amity".

[132][133] The dissenters argued that the principle of jus sanguinis (that is, the concept of a child inheriting his or her father's citizenship by descent regardless of birthplace) had been more pervasive in U.S. legal history since independence.

"[135][136][137] Pointing to the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, an act of Congress which declared to be citizens "all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed", and which was enacted into law only two months before the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress, the dissenters argued that "it is not open to reasonable doubt that the words 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' in the amendment, were used as synonymous with the words 'and not subject to any foreign power'".

[140] The question for the dissenters was "not whether [Wong Kim Ark] was born in the U.S. or subject to the jurisdiction thereof ... but whether his or her parents have the ability, under U.S. or foreign law, statutory or treaty-based, to become citizens of the U.S.

[141] In a lecture to a group of law students shortly before the decision was released, Harlan commented that the Chinese had long been excluded from American society "upon the idea that this is a race utterly foreign to us and never will assimilate with us."

[79][150][151] Because of his citizenship, Wong Kim Ark's youngest son was drafted in World War II, and later made a career in the United States Merchant Marine.

[169] An unsuccessful effort was made in 1942 by the Native Sons of the Golden West to convince the Supreme Court to revisit and overrule the Wong Kim Ark ruling, in a case (Regan v. King) challenging the citizenship status of roughly 2,600 U.S.-born persons of Japanese ancestry.

[176][177] Since the 1990s, controversy has arisen in some circles over the practice of granting automatic citizenship via jus soli to U.S.-born children of illegal aliens[178][179]—controversially dubbed the "anchor baby" situation by some media correspondents and advocacy groups.

"[186] In Epps' opinion, the sponsors of the Fourteenth Amendment "were unwavering in their insistence that the Citizenship Clause was to cover" the children of such "undesirable immigrants" as Chinese and Gypsies, and he views the Wong Kim Ark ruling as an "unexceptionable" matter of reading the drafters' intent.

"[169] A dictum footnote in the Court's majority opinion remarked that according to Wong Kim Ark, the Fourteenth Amendment's phrases subject to the jurisdiction thereof (in the Citizenship Clause) and within its jurisdiction (in the Equal Protection Clause) were essentially equivalent; that both expressions referred primarily to physical presence and not to political allegiance;[192] and that the Wong Kim Ark decision benefited the children of illegal as well as legal aliens.

Richard Posner, a judge of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, criticized (in 2003) the granting of citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, suggesting that Congress can and should act to change this policy.

[195] Charles Wood, former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on immigration, has also opposed the practice, urging (in 1999) that it be stopped as quickly as possible, either by an act of Congress or a constitutional amendment.

[196] However, in the words of Lucy Salyer, "the birthright citizenship doctrine of Wong Kim Ark has remained intact for over a century, still perceived by most to be a natural and well-established rule in accordance with American principles and practice.

1868, by Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia—was an attempt to exclude U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants from being considered subject to the jurisdiction of the United States for purposes of the Citizenship Clause.

Supporters of such legislation reportedly hoped their efforts would cause the issue of birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of illegal aliens to reach the Supreme Court, possibly resulting in a new decision narrowing or overruling Wong Kim Ark.

[205][206] On October 30, 2018, President Donald Trump announced his intention to issue an executive order abolishing birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of non-citizens.

[208] Jon Feere, of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), has said that "Several legal scholars and political scientists who have delved into the history of the 14th Amendment have concluded that 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' has no plain meaning".

However, upon assuming office on January 20, 2025, Trump announced an executive order abolishing birthright citizenship for anyone born in the United States without a mother or father that was a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.