The U.S. Supreme Court this week reaffirmed the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s attempt to end the longstanding practice of granting citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil.
In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that Trump's executive order violated the Fourteenth Amendment, preserving a principle that has defined American citizenship for more than 150 years.
As the justices considered the history of birthright citizenship in the United States, they turned to the work of UC Berkeley History Professor Hidetaka Hirota, whose 2017 book “Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy” was cited in the decision.
The Court referenced Hirota's account of the “outcry in 1855 when Massachusetts deported a pauper Irish mother with her American-born infant, who was acknowledged to be a native-born citizen,” illustrating that even during a period of strong anti-immigrant sentiment, birthright citizenship was widely recognized.
For Hirota, the citation highlights the value of historical scholarship in shaping contemporary legal debates.
“It's an honor to be cited in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on an issue of critical importance for our society,” Hirota said. “I appreciate the majority justices' serious handling of history and historical scholarship. The decision demonstrates how historians' work continues to matter in our society today.”
The decision also cites late Berkeley History Professor James Kettner’s 1978 book “The development of American citizenship, 1608-1870,” which is widely recognized as one of the most important accounts of the history of citizenship in the United States.
Hirota said the decision serves as a reminder that birthright citizenship has never been beyond challenge. He pointed to the landmark 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the Court affirmed the citizenship of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents, after his citizenship had been questioned amid widespread anti-Chinese discrimination and exclusion.
“Since then, birthright citizenship has long served as a source of membership, power and rights for a wide range of people and their families in the United States, many of whom were racial minorities,” he said. “At the same time, birthright citizenship has been criticized essentially on racist grounds precisely because it has created, protected and empowered non-white citizens.”
For Hirota, whose research explores the evolution of U.S. immigration law and debates over belonging, the decision underscores that the debates surrounding citizenship have deep historical roots that continue to shape the present.
“The case reminds us that birthright citizenship is something that must be actively protected rather than something that can be taken for granted,” Hirota said. “The current attacks on birthright citizenship and immigration, then, should be understood as parts of the same campaign driven by white supremacy.”
