By Maya Shulman | Shulman Family Law Group
Surrogacy • Adoption • Third-Party Reproduction
The immigration headlines missed a quieter story: the same principle holds up the legal foundation under thousands of surrogacy journeys.
When a child is born through surrogacy in the United States, one of the first things intended parents count on is clarity: the child born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen. That certainty is not a technicality. For many families — especially international ones — it is the entire reason they chose to build their family here. A recent decision at the Supreme Court put that certainty to the test, and while the coverage focused on immigration, the implications reach directly into the work we do every day.
What the Court Decided
On June 30, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Trump v. Barbara, ruling 6–3 that the 2025 executive order attempting to strip birthright citizenship from children born to undocumented and temporary-status parents is unconstitutional. Babies born on U.S. soil remain U.S. citizens — a principle rooted in the 14th Amendment and United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), now reaffirmed.
The mainstream coverage has focused, understandably, on immigration. But for those of us in third-party reproduction, the reverberations are enormous.
Why This Reaches Into Third-Party Reproduction
Think about what was actually at stake. In surrogacy, the person who gives birth is not the legal or genetic parent. Intended parents come from every corner of the world — many are international clients who build their families through U.S. gestational carriers precisely because of the legal clarity American law provides.
An executive order tying a newborn’s citizenship to the birth parent’s status, or introducing any ambiguity into “born in the United States,” would have thrown that clarity into chaos. Whose status governs the child — the carrier’s? The intended parents’? Neither fits the framework the order imagined, because surrogacy doesn’t fit the framework anyone imagined when drafting it.
That’s the quiet danger of citizenship rules written without assisted reproduction in mind: they don’t account for the families we help create every day. A ruling the other way wouldn’t just have harmed immigrant families — it would have destabilized the legal foundation under thousands of surrogacy journeys, cross-border and domestic alike.
The Foundation Holds — But the Fight Isn’t Over
For now, the foundation holds. But the fight isn’t over — legislation has already been introduced to pursue through Congress what the executive order couldn’t accomplish alone. This is the moment to engage, not exhale.
Call your representatives and senators. Tell them birthright citizenship isn’t an abstraction — it’s the ground your clients, your patients, and your own families stand on. Support the organizations litigating and lobbying to protect it. And if you build families for a living, add your voice: our profession understands, better than almost anyone, how citizenship and parentage actually work in practice, and that expertise belongs in the conversation.
Those of us who counsel intended parents and gestational carriers need to stay awake to this. The stability our clients rely on is not guaranteed; it is defended.
Talk to Counsel Before You Begin
If you’re an intended parent or carrier with questions about how citizenship and parentage intersect in your journey, this is exactly the conversation to have with counsel before you begin — not after. The right time to understand how the law applies to your family is at the outset, when planning can prevent complications rather than respond to them.
At Shulman Family Law Group, we focus on surrogacy, adoption, and third-party reproduction, and we help intended parents and gestational carriers navigate exactly these questions. Whether your journey is domestic or cross-border, we’d be glad to help you start on solid ground.
Maya Shulman is the founder of Shulman Family Law Group, where her practice focuses on surrogacy, adoption, and third-party reproduction.