Let’s say a child is born this year in El Paso, Texas. Her parents are undocumented but long-settled, working in construction and child care, respectively. They’ve lived in the United States for over a decade, pay taxes, raise their children, attend church, and volunteer at the elementary school. Their daughter arrives in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, 6 pounds and healthy, her name already chosen. A nurse congratulates the family and hands over an administrative packet. But when her mother returns two days later to complete the paperwork for her birth certificate, the hospital clerk grows quiet. “There’s a hold on this file,” she says. “It’s flagged.” No additional explanation. No indication of what comes next.

A week later, a letter arrives—not from the Department of Health and Human Services, but from the Department of Homeland Security. It informs the parents that their daughter’s documentation is under federal review pending a jurisdictional determination. The letter advises them not to submit further applications until they receive clarification. That clarification never arrives. After several weeks and a few phone calls, each ending in confusion or silence, the parents stop asking. They fear drawing attention. They worry that pressing further could lead to their own detention. And so their daughter, born on U.S. soil, begins her life as someone the government will not name, will not count, and will not recognize.

This scenario, until recently, might have read like a dystopian projection. But after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA on Friday, it is no longer hypothetical. It is imminent.

In a 6–3 ruling along ideological lines, the court declared that federal judges no longer have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions, an essential tool for halting executive orders across the country while their legality is challenged. The case centered on Executive Order 14160, signed by President Donald Trump in January, which directs federal agencies to stop recognizing the U.S. citizenship of children born to undocumented or temporary-status parents. The ruling did not assess the constitutionality of that executive order. Instead, it limited who can be protected from it. Under the court’s new logic, only individuals who directly sue the government can be shielded from a policy, regardless of how sweeping or unconstitutional its effects may be.

The court’s majority opinion, authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, held that federal courts no longer have the authority to issue what are sometimes called universal or nationwide injunctions—court orders that block a federal policy from being enforced against anyone, not just the plaintiffs in the case. The majority based its reasoning on the Judiciary Act of 1789, claiming that federal judges can only grant the kinds of equitable remedies that were recognized by English courts in the late 1700s. Since those courts did not issue nationwide injunctions, the court concluded that modern judges cannot either.

Under the new standard set by Trump v. CASA, even if a court finds a federal policy unconstitutional, that ruling applies only to the people who filed the lawsuit (and possibly fellow potential class members in a class-action lawsuit). It offers no relief to anyone else—not their neighbors, not people in similar circumstances, not children born the same week in the same state. For families without legal counsel, without standing, or without the time to sue, constitutional protections may exist in theory but disappear in practice. The government is now free to apply a policy to some people while being blocked from applying it to others, not based on legality, but based on who made it into court fast enough.

As a result, Executive Order 14160 is now set to take effect in 28 states within 30 days. The children it targets may be born into silence, their identities trapped in paperwork purgatory. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a blistering dissent read aloud from the bench, called the decision “a travesty for the rule of law.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson went further, warning that the court’s ruling gives the president “the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate.” But the damage is already unfolding. Without the shield of nationwide injunctions, the path is now clear for federal agencies to selectively enforce the executive order, denying documentation to newborns in some states while recognizing it in others, based not on constitutional principle but on geography.

The 14^th Amendment promises that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, are citizens. That principle was tested and affirmed in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898, when the court ruled that a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, neither of whom were U.S. citizens, was indeed a citizen of the United States. That precedent has stood unshaken for over a century. But EO 14160 doesn’t seek to overturn it through the courts. It seeks to nullify it in practice. Rather than confronting Wong Kim Ark head-on, the order bypasses legal challenge altogether by exploiting agency discretion. It instructs federal employees to delay, deny, or quietly decline to process the documents that transform constitutional rights into civic reality: birth certificates, Social Security numbers, and passports.

There will be no announcement. No formal declaration that a newborn has been excluded from the promise of citizenship. Instead, there will be delays. Silences. A birth certificate that never arrives. A passport application that disappears into administrative review. A Social Security number that is never assigned, leaving a child ineligible for Medicaid, public preschool, or programs like Head Start. The family will wait. They will make phone calls, send follow-up emails, perhaps even visit a local office. Eventually they will stop trying. In some states—those that challenged the executive order early—court injunctions may block its enforcement, preserving the right to documentation. But in others, no such protections exist. And so the landscape will fracture. Two children born on the same morning in different states may receive entirely different legal treatment. One child, born in California, will grow up with access to health care, schooling, and identification. Another, born in Georgia or Indiana or Arizona, will begin life without any of those tools—not because of anything she did, but because of where her mother gave birth.

And for that second child, the consequences will not simply be delayed paperwork or bureaucratic hassle. They will be life-defining.

She will enter school late or not at all, because her parents cannot prove her age or residency. If she is enrolled, she may be dropped from programs that require federal verification. She will not qualify for school meals, Medicaid, or disability benefits. Her family may avoid clinics and hospitals, fearing attention or deportation. She will grow up hearing “no” in a dozen quiet ways: No, we can’t sign you up. No, you’re missing documentation. No, we can’t make an exception. When her classmates apply for driver’s licenses at 16, she will stay home. When they work part-time jobs or fill out the FAFSA, she will know it’s not worth trying. If she becomes pregnant at 20, she may be unable to deliver her child in a hospital without risking exposure. If she applies for housing or credit, she will be denied for lack of a legal identity. If she tries to get married, register to vote, or access public services, she will be asked to produce a document that was never issued. Her exclusion will not be dramatic. It will simply shape everything she is allowed to do.

Statelessness is not abstract. It is a condition that touches every part of daily life. International law defines a stateless person as someone “not considered a national by any state under the operation of its law.” But that language fails to capture what the experience actually means. It means not being able to enroll your child in school. It means being denied a routine vaccination because you do not have a state-issued ID. It means being turned away from an after-school program, a public library, or a doctor’s office. It means not being able to prove your age to play youth sports, not being able to sign up for a community college course, not being able to take the driving test. It means growing up knowing that systems are not built for you. And that no one is coming to fix it.

The effects are not theoretical. In Myanmar, a 1982 law stripped the Rohingya of citizenship and barred them from legal education, property ownership, and participation in public life. That system of exclusion helped pave the way for military crackdowns and eventual mass displacement. In the Dominican Republic, a 2013 court decision retroactively denied citizenship to tens of thousands of Dominican-born children of Haitian descent. A decade later, many still live in limbo, unable to go to school or work legally. In Kuwait, generations of Bidūn families have lived without nationality, shut out of public jobs and education. And in Lebanon and Jordan, millions of Palestinians born without nationality remain in legal limbo, denied everything from employment to basic health care.

Each of these situations began the same way. Quietly. With forms that never arrived. With policies that redefined recognition without saying so out loud. Statelessness does not always announce itself. It creeps in through silence, denial, and the slow breakdown of systems that people once assumed would protect them.

More than 4.4 million U.S.-born children live in households with at least one undocumented parent. Most have never lived outside the United States. Many would not qualify for citizenship in their family’s countries of origin. They are culturally and socially American. But under this policy, their ability to prove it has been put at risk.

Some may argue that Congress can step in. In theory, Congress could pass legislation to codify birthright citizenship. It could explicitly block executive orders like EO 14160. But in practice, such action is unlikely. That leaves state and local governments, civil rights organizations, and legal advocates to respond. States can pass their own policies guaranteeing documentation regardless of federal interference. Local governments can launch municipal ID programs, invest in legal assistance, and refuse to share data with federal agencies. Lawyers can pursue class actions. Advocates can mobilize public attention. These actions will not undo the Supreme Court’s decision, but they can offer real protection to the families most at risk.

What is unfolding is not simply a policy change. It is a fundamental question about who we are as a country. Do we still believe that birth on American soil secures a right to belong? Or will we accept a future in which the answer depends on paperwork, politics, and proximity to power?

For the child born this summer in Texas, whose parents receive no documents, whose name never appears in any system, and who grows up asking why she can’t go on field trips, apply for scholarships, or open a bank account, the consequences are not legal theory. They are her life. They are her future. And they will shape everything she does, and everything she cannot do.