SAAJCO led a coalition of South Asian civil rights and community organizations in filing an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court defending the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.
The brief was filed in partnership with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and joined by South Asian focused and allied organizations nationwide. Drawing on the long and often overlooked history of South Asian presence in the United States, the brief explains how South Asian communities have, for centuries, sought to assert their rights of citizenship and belonging.
In short, for centuries South Asian Americans have been woven into the nation’s economic, political, and social fabric. When they have been treated as outsiders, it has been not because of a lack of contribution or commitment, but because of racialized judgments about who belongs.
The brief warns that conditioning recognition of citizenship at birth on parental immigration status would undermine settled constitutional law and destabilize families who have relied on the guarantee that children born here are Americans.
In a 6–3 decision, the Court rejected the Administration’s attempt to deny citizenship to U.S.-born children based on their parents’ immigration status. For generations, South Asian Americans have confronted efforts to cast our communities as perpetual outsiders, regardless of how long we have lived, worked, organized, and raised families here. Today’s decision rejects that harmful vision and upholds a constitutional promise that has protected generations of Americans.
A coalition of South Asian civil rights and community organizations signed onto an amicus brief Thursday, February 26, 2026, in the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the Executive Order targeting birthright citizenship would reintroduce a regime in which citizenship depends on administrative interpretation rather than constitutional command.
Fighting for the civil and human rights of the South Asian diaspora in the United States
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