(Originally published by Just Security on February 19, 2025.)

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” In 1995, Walter Dellinger, then the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), testified before Congress that legislative proposals to deny birthright citizenship to children born to undocumented parents would “unquestionably” violate this constitutional guarantee. Indeed, Dellinger pointedly declared that although OLC “grapples with many difficult and close issues of constitutional law,” this is “not among them.”

Continue reading the opinion here.