Two moments in American history, separated by 168 years, show how Black Americans' struggle for citizenship rights has shaped our nation's most fundamental constitutional principles.
In 1857, four years before the Civil War, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision ruled that no person of African descent – whether free or enslaved – could be a U.S. citizen. Then-Chief Justice Taney claimed Black Americans had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," denying them protection under law and explicitly excluding them from the Constitution's "We the People."
Frederick Douglass Weighs In
Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) condemned this "hell-black judgment," declaring: "It is a serious matter to fling the weight of the Constitution against the cause of human liberty." Douglass insisted that "We, the people" meant "not we, the white people—not we, the citizens, or the legal voters—not we, the privileged class, and excluding all other classes… but we the people—the men and women, the human inhabitants of the United States."
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, overturned Dred Scott and established that "All 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." This amendment ensured citizenship for four million formerly enslaved people and their children. The Amendment and other crucial measures passed by the Congress were meant to reinforce a new era of democratic Reconstruction. Although that era was short-lived, overtaken by racist Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, the principle of birthright citizenship has endured and subsequently been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
New challenge to birthright citizenship
Today, this constitutional right faces a new challenge. On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order attempting to deny citizenship to children born to non-citizen parents in the United States. Washington State's Attorney General Nick Brown, along with counterparts in Oregon, Illinois and Arizona, immediately sued to block the order.
On January 23, Federal Judge John Coughenour temporarily blocked the order's implementation, calling it "blatantly unconstitutional." On February 6, he extended the preliminary injunction on a nationwide basis.
The federal government will likely appeal, and the stakes are enormous. The order would affect over 150,000 newborns annually, including 4,000 in Washington state. Denied documentation of their citizenship status, these children would be unable to obtain Social Security numbers. They would lose their rights to vote, serve on juries, or run for office. Access to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing and employment protections could be imperiled. Many could face immediate deportation.
This Black History Month, Douglass's words still resonate: "The Constitution knows all the human inhabitants of this country as 'the people.' It makes no discrimination in favor of, or against, any class of the people, but is fitted to protect and preserve the rights of all."
Just as the 14th Amendment prevented government from denying citizenship to Black Americans, today's legal battle attempts to prevent the creation of new classes of disenfranchised residents, further challenging the American ideal of equal justice.