It needs to go to SCOTUS. I don’t know about that ruling, but will ask someone on FR who will know.
Congressional Research Service:
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42097.pdf
Most of it gets tediously & extensively about the soil part from the founding on.
{added paragraphing & emphases}
QUOTE:
Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement
Congressional Research Service 25
Citizenship at Birth: Case Law and Interpretations
The overwhelming evidence of historical intent, general understandings, and common law principles underlying American jurisprudence thus indicate that the most reasonable interpretation of “natural born” citizens would include those who are considered U.S. citizens “at birth” or “by birth,” either by the operation of the strict “common law” of jus soli derived from English common law (physically born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, without reference to parentage or lineage), or under existing federal statutory law incorporating long-standing concepts of jus sanguinis, the law of descent, including those born abroad of U.S. citizen-parents.
This general historical understanding and interpretation is supported, as well, by specific federal case law in the United States, and in official legal opinions of U.S. officers.
Although the Supreme Court has not needed to rule specifically on the presidential eligibility clause, as discussed in more detail below, numerous federal cases, as well as state cases, for more than a century have used the term “natural born citizen” to describe a person born in this country and under its jurisdiction, even to parents who were aliens in the U.S.114
Additionally, several Supreme Court cases, as well as numerous constitutional scholars, have used the term “native born” citizen to indicate all of those children physically born in the country (and subject to its jurisdiction), without reference to parentage or lineage, and employed such term in reference to those citizens eligible to be President under the “natural born” citizenship clause, as opposed to “naturalized” citizens, who are not.115
In no currently controlling legal opinion in American jurisprudence has the citizenship or nationality of one’s parents or forebears been considered a determining factor in the eligibility of a native born U.S. citizen to be President, and no holding in any case in federal court has ever established a “two citizen-parent” requirement, or other requirement of lineage or bloodline, for a native born U.S. citizen to be eligible for the Presidency.
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(...continued) legal lexicon as defined as: “A citizen by birth, as distinguished from a citizen who has been naturalized.” BALLENTINE’S LAW DICTIONARY, at 831 (“natural-born citizen”) (3rd ed. 1969), and as “A person born within the jurisdiction of a national government,” BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY, at 278 (“natural-born citizen”) (9th ed. 2009), as well as the common dictionary meanings of “natural-born,” as “having a specified status or character by birth” (note specific reference to presidential eligibility), WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE,UNABRIDGED, at p. 1507 (1976). It may also be noted that the English word “natural,” according to the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, is rooted in the “Middle English (in the sense ‘having a certain status by birth’) ....” Emphasis added.
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{See also page 29}
p 30:
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Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement Congressional Research Service 30 The Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark cited with approval to an earlier decision of a federal circuit court, written by Supreme Court Justice Swayne sitting on circuit, explaining that
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All persons born in the allegiance of the King are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as in England.... We find no warrant for the opinion that this great principle of the common law has ever been changed in the United States. It has always obtained here with the same vigor, and subject to the same exceptions, since before the Revolution.13
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The interpretation that one who obtains “citizenship by birth” is a “natural born” citizen eligible to be President, as distinguished from one who derives “citizenship by naturalization” and who is not so eligible, was discussed by the Supreme Court as early as 1884:
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p 31:
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and “the Congress shall have the power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.” Constitution, art. 2, sect. 1; art. 1, sect. 8.136
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p 36:
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t is significant to note that in a more recent case, in 2001, the Supreme Court indicated that under current law and jurisprudence a child born to U.S. citizens while living or traveling abroad, and a child born in the geographic United States, had the same legal status.
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p. 37
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The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has specifically recognized in a recent case that one may be a “natural born” citizen of the United Sates in two ways: either by being born in the United States, or by being born abroad of at least one citizen-parent who has met the residency requirement
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p38:
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At the time of Senator’s McCain’s birth, the pertinent citizenship provision prescribed that “[a]ny child hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such child is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.” Act of May 24, 1934, Pub. L. No. 73-250, 48 Stat. 797.
The Supreme Court has interpreted the phrase “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States” in this statute to be the converse of the phrase “in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” in the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore to encompass all those not granted citizenship directly by the Fourteenth Amendment. [United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 687 (1898) ....] Under this view, Senator McCain was a citizen at birth. In 1937, to remove any doubt as to persons in Senator McCain’s circumstances in the Canal Zone, Congress enacted 8 U.S.C. 1403(a), which declared that persons in Senator McCain’s circumstances are citizens by virtue of their birth, thereby retroactively rendering Senator McCain a natural born citizen, if he was not one already. This order finds it highly probable, for the purposes of this motion for provisional relief, that Senator McCain is a natural born citizen. Plaintiff has not demonstrated the likelihood of success on the merits necessary to warrant the drastic remedy he seeks. 170
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Exploring the common-law origins of citizenship, the court observed that "new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization" and that the Constitution "does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens."
Under the common law, according to the court;
"it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens"
(as distinguished from aliens or foreigners)
- Chief Justice Morrison Waite 1875.