After Trump v. Barbara reaffirmed Fourteenth Amendment birthright citizenship in the states, the White House and allies are hunting a territorial carve-out. Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) says Congress can grant or strip territorial rights by statute; his “End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act” would end automatic citizenship in Puerto Rico, Guam, USVI, and CNMI from 1 Jan 2027. Vance called restrictions “a great idea.” Trump’s 6 August orders added territorial language Plaskett says could leave children “citizens of nowhere.”

~4 million people live in five inhabited territories. Four have statutory birthright citizenship; American Samoans are U.S. nationals. Administrations have long said the Citizenship Clause does not cover “unincorporated” lands—the Insular Cases. Gorsuch and Sotomayor have called those cases racist; the Court still declined Fitisemanu.

King-Hinds (R-NMI) says Griffith’s bill will not pass. The author still reads a colonial turn: subjects, not citizens, against the 250th-anniversary language of consent. Right to Democracy and island press are organizing. This is advocacy analysis, not settled law.

The Trump administration and its supporters are preparing a major change in U.S. colonial practices by moving to restrict birthright citizenship in U.S. territories.

Since the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Trump v. Barbara that people born in the United States are citizens of the United States, as guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Trump administration has been seeking an exception for the territories. Trying to evade the Barbara decision, the White House and its allies in Congress are making new legal maneuvers that would prevent people born in the territories from being U.S. citizens.

“The Barbara case leaves the door open for Congressional action on citizenship in the American territories,” Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA) said in a statement in July. “Just like Congress possesses the power to grant the territories Constitutional rights in statute, we have the power to take them away in statute.”

Citizenship in the Territories

Today, nearly four million people live in the five permanently inhabited territories of the United States, which are Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The residents of all five territories live under U.S. jurisdiction, but they endure significant limits to their rights and freedoms, such as unequal rights and unequal representation in Congress. They have never been treated as equals, especially as it concerns........

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