Supreme Court Upholds Birthright Citizenship, Rejects Trump Order

A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a broad interpretation of birthright citizenship, striking down President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to mothers who are undocumented or in the country temporarily.

Court Rules 6-3 Against Trump’s Citizenship Order

The court voted 6-3 to strike down Trump’s order, with a bare majority of five justices holding in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts that the long-established understanding of the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to nearly anyone born on US soil, with only narrow exceptions.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote, citing congressional debate surrounding the amendment’s adoption after the Civil War. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh provided the sixth vote against Trump’s order but on different grounds, pointing to federal statute rather than constitutional text as the basis for birthright citizenship. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas dissented and would have upheld Trump’s proposed restrictions.

Thomas Issues Lengthy Dissent, Citing Reconstruction History

Justice Thomas wrote a 91-page dissent — more than three times the length of Roberts’ majority opinion — arguing the ruling misapplies the historical purpose of the 14th Amendment. “The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially unconstitutional the President’s Order excluding from citizenship the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens,” Thomas wrote, adding that the amendment was designed to secure rights for formerly enslaved Black Americans but “has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”

What the 14th Amendment Says

The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” While the amendment was adopted primarily to guarantee citizenship for former slaves, its text applies more broadly, excluding only the children of foreign diplomats and those born to an occupying foreign force.

Lower courts had repeatedly struck down Trump’s order as illegal, citing the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that a child born in the US to Chinese immigrant parents was a US citizen. Roberts, joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the court’s three liberal justices, said the amendment’s text, historical context, and the Wong Kim Ark precedent make clear that children born to parents who are undocumented or in the country temporarily “are citizens at birth.”

Trump’s Order Never Took Effect

Trump’s birthright citizenship order, signed on the first day of his second term as part of a broader immigration crackdown, was blocked by several lower courts and never took effect anywhere in the country. The case reaching the Supreme Court stemmed from a New Hampshire ruling that struck down the restrictions.

Trump called Tuesday’s decision “too bad for our Country” and suggested, incorrectly, that Congress could “easily” reverse it through legislation. Because the ruling rests on constitutional grounds, only a constitutional amendment could overturn it.

A Pattern of Friction With the Court

The birthright citizenship case marked the first of Trump’s major immigration policies to reach the Supreme Court for a final ruling. It came months after the court struck down global tariffs Trump had imposed under an emergency powers law never previously used for that purpose — a decision that prompted Trump to publicly criticize the justices who ruled against him as unpatriotic.

Ahead of Tuesday’s ruling, Trump appeared to anticipate an unfavorable outcome, using his Truth Social platform to criticize “dumb judges and justices” and wealthy pregnant women who travel to the US specifically to give birth so their children gain American citizenship.

Kavanaugh’s Narrower Path and Future Implications

Kavanaugh’s concurrence diverged from the majority’s constitutional reasoning. He agreed that the children covered by Trump’s order are currently citizens, but only because of existing federal law — not because the Constitution requires it. That distinction matters significantly: under Kavanaugh’s reasoning, a future Congress could pass legislation narrowing birthright citizenship, something the majority’s constitutional ruling would not permit.

Scope of the Ruling

The Trump administration had argued that children born to noncitizen parents are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore do not qualify for automatic citizenship. According to research from the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute, more than a quarter of a million babies born in the US each year would have been affected by the order.

While Trump’s rhetoric has largely centered on illegal immigration, the proposed restrictions would also have applied to children born to parents who are legally present in the country, including international students and applicants for green cards.