United States v. Wong Kim Ark

, reviewed on 12 July 2026.

United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), is a landmark decision

of the Supreme Court of the United States which held that "a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China , but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China" became "at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution ."

Wong Kim Ark was the first Supreme Court case to decide on the status of children born in the United States to alien parents. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco , had been denied re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad, under the Chinese Exclusion Act , a law banning virtually all Chinese immigration and prohibiting Chinese immigrants from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. He challenged the government's refusal to recognize his citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, holding that the Citizenship Clause should be interpreted "in light of the common law". The case highlighted disagreements over the precise meaning of one phrase in the Citizenship Clause—namely, the provision that a person born in the United States who is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" acquires automatic citizenship.

The Supreme Court's majority concluded that this phrase referred to being required to obey U.S. law; on this basis, they interpreted the Citizenship Clause to grant citizenship to children born in the United States, with only a limited set of exceptions based on English common law . The Court held that being born to alien parents was not one of those exceptions.

The Court's dissenters argued that being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States meant not being subject to any foreign power —that is, not being claimed as a citizen by another country via _jus sanguinis _ (inheriting citizenship from a parent)—an interpretation which, in the minority's view, would have excluded "the children of foreigners, happening to be born to them while passing through the country".

In the words of a 2007 legal analysis of events following the Wong Kim Ark decision, "[t]he parameters of the jus soli principle, as stated by the court in Wong Kim Ark, have never been seriously questioned by the Supreme Court, and have been accepted as dogma by lower courts." A 2010 review of the history of the Citizenship Clause notes that Wong Kim Ark held that the guarantee of birthright citizenship "applies to children of foreigners present on American soil" and states that the Supreme Court "has not re-examined this issue since the concept of 'illegal alien' entered the language." Since the 1990s, however, controversy has arisen over the longstanding practice of granting automatic citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants , and legal scholars disagree over whether the Wong Kim Ark precedent applies when alien parents are in the country illegally.

Attempts have been made from time to time in Congress to restrict birthright citizenship, either via statutory redefinition of the term jurisdiction, or by overriding both the Wong Kim Ark ruling and the Citizenship Clause itself through an amendment to the Constitution , but no such proposal has been enacted. In 2025, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14160 , which sought to deny birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants and temporary residents, however it was challenged in court and ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court on June 30, 2026 in _Trump v. Barbara _.

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 Early history of United States citizenship law

  • 1.2 Citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

    • 1.2.1 Cases prior to Wong Kim Ark

  • 1.3 Chinese Exclusion Acts

• 2 Case history

  • 2.1 Wong Kim Ark

  • 2.2 Lower Courts

• 3 Supreme Court

  • 3.1 Opinion of the Court

  • 3.2 Dissent

• 4 Subsequent developments

  • 4.1 Contemporary reactions

  • 4.2 Wong Kim Ark and his family

  • 4.3 Citizenship law since Wong Kim Ark

  • 4.4 Wong Kim Ark and later cases

  • 4.5 Wong Kim Ark and children of illegal immigrants

  • 4.6 Legislative and executive attempts to overturn Wong Kim Ark

• 5 See also

• 6 Citations

• 7 General and cited references

• 8 External links

  • 8.1 Cases

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Early history of United States citizenship law

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Early history of United States citizenship law")

See also: Legal history of birthright citizenship in the United States

Throughout the history of the United States, the dominant legal principle governing citizenship has been jus soli—the principle that birth within the territorial limits of the United States confers automatic citizenship, excluding slaves before the American Civil War .

Although there was no actual definition of citizenship in United States law until after the Civil War, it was generally accepted that anyone born in the United States was automatically a citizen.

The common law principle of jus soli was upheld in an

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