Sher Tremonte Represents Members of Congress in Supreme Court Amicus Brief Defending Birthright Citizenship

On February 19, 2026, Sher Tremonte LLP filed an amicus curiae brief in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of 216 Members of Congress in Trump v. Barbara, No. 25-365, a case challenging the legality of the Administration’s effort to restrict birthright citizenship by executive order. The brief supports respondents and urges the Court to affirm that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) guarantees citizenship to nearly all persons born in the United States.

While other briefing in the case focuses on the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, the Members of Congress explain that the Executive Order independently fails because it conflicts with Congress’s explicit command in 8 USC § 1401(a). Tracing the history of federal immigration law from the Civil Rights Act of 1866 through the Nationality Act of 1940 and the 1952 INA, the amici show that Congress adopted and repeatedly reaffirmed the common-law jus soli rule—mandating citizenship at birth for all persons born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” subject only to narrow, well-understood exceptions.

The brief further demonstrates that the modern INA is built around this statutory birthright-citizenship guarantee and would become incoherent if people born in the United States to noncitizen parents were not citizens. It also explains how Congress has repeatedly declined to amend the statute despite decades of proposed legislation seeking to narrow that rule.

The Sher Tremonte team on the filing includes partner Douglas Jensen and associate Michael Bass, who served as counsel for the Members of Congress alongside co-counsel Professor Jonathan Weinberg of Wayne State University and Professor Linus Chan of the University of Minnesota

Read the amicus brief here