Republicans want to end birthright citizenship in US territories

House Republicans have introduced legislation that would end automatic birthright citizenship in most U.S. territories, marking a new effort to narrow the scope of citizenship rights beyond the fifty states—and potentially opening a new legal front weeks after the Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship on the mainland.

The End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act, introduced by Representative Morgan Griffith, a Virginia Republican, would amend federal laws that grant U.S. citizenship at birth to people born in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. The legislation would limit those provisions to people born before January 1, 2027, effectively ending automatic citizenship for future births unless at least one parent is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.

Birthright citizenship is the legal principle that grants U.S. citizenship to most people born on American soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The administration has sought to restrict the long-standing interpretation of birthright citizenship, but those efforts stalled on June 30, when the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order.

The case that prompted the ruling, Trump v. Barbara, had addressed whether children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are entitled to citizenship at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. The court held that such children are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. The new proposal is part of the Trump administration’s push to reduce immigration levels and tighten restrictions on who can qualify for U.S. citizenship.

The bill would not affect people who already hold U.S. citizenship, as the amendments would not alter the citizenship or nationality status of anyone born before January 1, 2027.

In announcing the proposal, Griffith said the legislation was a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara, which addressed birthright citizenship under the Constitution but left questions about citizenship in U.S. territories unresolved. Griffith said the ruling allows Congress to act on territorial citizenship laws, which currently grant automatic U.S. citizenship at birth in most territories regardless of a parent’s nationality.

American Samoa would remain unaffected by the proposal. Unlike other inhabited U.S. territories, people born in American Samoa are generally classified as U.S. nationals at birth rather than U.S. citizens, allowing them to live and work in the United States without automatically receiving the full rights and privileges of citizenship.

“I am leading a bill to crack down on birthright citizenship in the territories and combat foreign nationals who are exploiting loopholes in our citizenship laws to take advantage of U.S. generosity,” Griffith said in a news release.

According to the congressman, the bill is intended to address what he describes as exploitation of citizenship laws through “birth tourism,” reserving automatic citizenship in the territories for children born to U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

Griffith’s legislation relies in part on the so-called Insular Cases, a series of Supreme Court decisions from the early 1900s concerning the application of constitutional rights in U.S. territories. The bill says Congress has authority to legislate regarding territorial citizenship and cites its power to amend statutes governing citizenship in the territories.

Critics of the new territorial citizenship bill argue that it could have significant effects beyond what its supporters intend.

“This dangerous and unconstitutional legislation highlights the problem with the Insular Cases and the idea that Congress has the power to simply turn constitutional rights on and off at will in U.S. territories,” Neil Weare, a co-director of Right to Democracy, a group that advocates for democracy and self-determination in U.S. territories, said in a statement shared with Newsweek.

Weare, who helped file an amicus brief in Trump v. Barbara on behalf of current and former territorial officials, said the bill’s operative amendments do not explicitly include language limiting the changes solely to children born to noncitizen or nonpermanent resident parents. He argued that, if enacted as written, the measure could create uncertainty for people born in the territories after 2026.

Adi Martinez-Roman, a co-director of Right to Democracy and another attorney involved in the amicus brief, said the proposal raised constitutional questions about the extent of federal power over territorial citizenship.

“The legislation is also especially troubling because it seeks to unilaterally amend the citizenship provisions negotiated in the Northern Mariana Islands’ Covenant, which under Public Law 94-241 require ‘mutual consent’ to change,” Martinez-Roman said. “This is just the kind of federal action the Covenant was negotiated to prevent.”

If approved by Congress and signed into law, the measure would mark one of the most significant proposed changes to citizenship policy in U.S. territories in decades, potentially setting up a new legal debate over whether the Constitution protects citizenship for people born in the territories or remains subject to congressional revision.

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