In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling yesterday, one lawmaker is demanding an immediate special session to criminalize “birth tourism” and push Texas to flex its sovereignty on citizenship questions.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara, State Rep. Brian Harrison (R–Midlothian) is publicly urging Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session to “MAKE IT A FELONY TO ENGAGE IN BIRTH TOURISM IN TEXAS” and to “stop issuing birth certificates to non-citizens,” among other measures.
Birth tourism is when a pregnant woman travels to another country primarily to give birth there so her child can gain that country’s citizenship at birth.
Harrison has argued that Texans “deserve action, not just rhetoric,” and insisted that Texas must “start acting like the sovereign state it is” when Washington policies and federal courts “threaten to destroy the very fabric of our republic.”
The demand frames Texas as more than a bystander in federal immigration fights, calling for “bold and decisive action to protect liberty for future generations” rather than waiting on Congress or the Supreme Court.
The proposal lays out a detailed list for a special session aimed at targeting birth tourism and directly challenging the practical effects of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Harrison is calling on the Legislature to:
- Make birth tourism a felony by criminalizing the operation of or participation in birth-tourism businesses within Texas’ borders.
- Expand the state’s illegal-entry offense so that entering Texas “for purposes of birth tourism” would be a specific criminal violation under state law.
- Stop issuing birth certificates to children of non‑citizens, a move that would directly test the boundaries between state vital‑records authority and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
- Grant the Texas attorney general explicit authority to investigate and prosecute birth-tourism schemes, adding state-level enforcement power on top of existing federal tools.
- Ban certain adoption and surrogacy arrangements by prohibiting preplanned adoption agreements and gestational surrogacy contracts if any party is a citizen or resident of a “country of concern,” mirroring provisions already enacted in Florida.
In addition to statutory changes, the proposal seeks formal legislative pushback on the Court’s decision, including a resolution condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Barbara; and a resolution demanding that Congress “take any and all necessary actions” to “fix birthright citizenship.”
The special session demands echo themes laid out in a statement by the Sharia‑Free Texas Caucus, which condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling as a “catastrophic decision” that extends birthright citizenship to children of illegal entrants and birth tourists. That statement argued the ruling “threatens Texas sovereignty and American constitutional order” and claimed it arms “our enemies with a blueprint for our national destruction” by rewarding unlawful presence and temporary visits with citizenship.
Citing the 14th Amendment’s original intent and Texas’ history as an independent republic, the caucus members insisted that Texas “has never surrendered our right to defend our territory or decide who belongs among us” and vowed to use state police powers and the Tenth Amendment to reassert state authority over citizenship and lawful presence.
State Rep. Andy Hopper (R–Decatur), a member of the Sharia-Free Texas Caucus, stated, “The ultimate arbiter of the Constitution remain[s] the states who ratified it, not federal courts. We will do what we must to protect our home.”
