SangYeob Kim spent what he could only describe as a “pretty significant” number of hours preparing his case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Tuesday morning at his Concord office, the lawyer hovered by his computer to watch the ruling roll out: In a 6-3 decision, justices sided with his client, a New Hampshire woman who challenged President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship. The mother from Honduras, who sued under the pseudonym “Barbara,” feared the order would strip her baby of U.S. citizenship and the rights and opportunities that citizenship carries.
As the ruling went live, Kim went into dissection mode, unpacking pages upon pages of the justices’ reasoning to see what it meant for Barbara and her baby.
“What it means is Barbara Jr. is a U.S. citizen,” Kim said of the ruling. “That’s regardless of the immigration status of Barbara, and … it extends far beyond just Barbara. It applies to all children born in the U.S. They are U.S. citizens. They have always been U.S. citizens. They are still U.S. citizens. They will continue to be U.S. citizens.”
Kim, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Network at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, sat on the legal team arguing against the president’s restrictions on birthright citizenship. Barbara was the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit.
The court’s ruling, drawing on the history behind the Fourteenth Amendment, upholds the constitutional principle that children born on U.S. soil are granted automatic citizenship, even if their parents are undocumented immigrants.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land’ … We keep that promise today.”
Trump’s order was part of sweeping changes to the country’s immigration landscape. Under his order, children born in the U.S. wouldn’t be considered citizens if their mother was in the country illegally and their father wasn’t a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Barbara came to the U.S. in 2024 and lives in New Hampshire with her husband and children. Her asylum application with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is still pending, according to court documents. When the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU of New Hampshire last year, she was pregnant with her fourth child.
Under those requirements, the lawsuit stated, Barbara worried her baby would not be granted U.S. citizenship and be “unjustly denied the security, rights and opportunities” that come with it.
The Supreme Court’s ruling upheld the one issued in New Hampshire by federal Judge Joseph Laplante.
Kim celebrated the ruling on Tuesday and thanked the parents who took their case all the way to the highest court.
“It has been a difficult journey, but the outcome is the same,” Kim said. “The meaning of the Constitution has been the same for more than 150 years, and we are really proud, and we are glad that the Supreme Court reaffirmed that interpretation today.”
U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander, a Democrat representing Concord and the second district, had joined other members of Congress in filing an amicus brief on the case.
“We fought President Trump’s Executive Order from the moment it was issued,” Goodlander said in a statement on Tuesday. “Today is a good day for our Constitution, for families across this country, and for the cornerstone principle that in America, birthright citizenship cannot be stripped away by presidential decree.”
