Professor Medha D. Makhlouf and MLP Clinic students publish policy brief on birthright citizenship

CARLISLE—Professor Medha D. Makhlouf, along with Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) Clinic students Madison Cain and Niti Patel, authored a Policy Explainer titled “Birthright Citizenship and the 2025 Executive Order” for a new Penn State website called U.S. Migration Metrics. The website’s launch coincided with oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. Barbara, a constitutional challenge to the 2025 Executive Order.

The Policy Explainer explains the origin of the legal principle of birthright citizenship in the United States, describes the 2025 Executive Order that denies birthright citizenship to certain children born to noncitizen parents, and summarizes the current status of legal challenges. It was posted alongside a Research Brief highlighting a study showing that the Executive Order would have disparate impacts on children of Asian and Latino immigrants.

The website is an academic project focused on democratizing access to nonpartisan data and information on the U.S. foreign-born population. Through publication of Policy Explainers, Data Drops, and Research Briefs, the site aims to make migration trends and their policy implications more accessible. It also hosts an interactive dashboard that provides access to customizable estimates and visualizations of immigration data by region, demographic group, and country of origin. Each month, U.S. Migration Metrics will publish a new Policy Explainer authored by Makhlouf and students in the MLP Clinic.

Professor Medha D. Makhlouf is the Elsie de R. and Samuel P. Orlando Distinguished Professor and founding director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic at Penn State Dickinson Law. She has a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine. Professor Makhlouf’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of health law, immigrants’ rights, and poverty law and policy. Her recent scholarship has been published in the Boston University Law Review, New York University Law Review, and the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics. Professor Makhlouf is currently writing a book, tentatively titled Health Justice for Migrants, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press.