Who gets to be an American citizen?

April 7, 2026·15 min·1 clip

The Supreme Court is now hearing arguments that could undo birthright citizenship, a precedent set by Wong Kim Ark's case over a century ago.

The episode opens by noting that the Supreme Court is currently hearing oral arguments over birthright citizenship, setting up the historical case of Wong Kim Ark as the origin of that legal precedent. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in the early 1870s to Chinese immigrant parents who ran a grocery store. His family lived within a quarter mile of his birthplace for most of his early life. Chinese immigrants were initially welcomed for their labor on the Transcontinental Railroad and in gold mining, but an economic downturn led to scapegoating and anti-Chinese violence. In 1877, a mob burned buildings and killed four men in San Francisco's Chinatown, driving Wong Kim Ark's family back to China. Wong Kim Ark returned to the U.S. at age 11 and watched anti-Chinese sentiment harden into law: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese laborers from immigrating or naturalizing, the Page Act barred Chinese women, and the Geary Act required Chinese immigrants to carry identification papers. Because the Page Act prevented him from bringing a wife to the U.S., Wong Kim Ark traveled to China to marry and start a family, returning to San Francisco to work. On one such return trip, he was denied entry — not by accident, but because the U.S. government had deliberately selected him as a test case to challenge birthright citizenship for children of Chinese immigrants. His case traveled from a California district court to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it hinged on the interpretation of the 14th Amendment's phrase 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' The Fuller Court, known for Plessy v. Ferguson and openly hostile to Chinese immigrants, heard arguments in March 1897. The government's lawyer argued that Wong Kim Ark's parents' loyalty to the Chinese emperor transferred to their son, disqualifying him from citizenship. He went further, claiming the 14th Amendment was itself unconstitutional because Southern states were coerced into ratifying it. Wong Kim Ark's lawyers countered with two arguments: that birthright citizenship was a long-standing principle in English and American common law, and that the 14th Amendment adopted that principle. Crucially, they warned the court that ruling against Wong Kim Ark would strip citizenship from millions of children of European immigrants already in the country. After more than a year, the Supreme Court ruled in Wong Kim Ark's favor, with Justice Gray writing that the broad language 'all persons born in the United States' was not intended to exclude children of immigrants. The court noted, using the phrase 'obnoxious Chinese,' that ruling otherwise would also affect children of English, German, and French immigrants — a pragmatic consideration that likely drove the decision. The episode notes that the ruling did not automatically extend to Native Americans, whose tribal sovereignty placed them outside the jurisdiction clause at the time. Despite winning, Wong Kim Ark was arrested again in 1901 as a suspected illegal immigrant and spent months in detention. He eventually returned to China in his 60s and never came back to the United States. The hosts close by connecting this history to the live Supreme Court case that could undo what Wong Kim Ark's legal battle established.

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