The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to end the long-standing practice of granting citizenship to people born on U.S. soil, dealing a major blow to his efforts to overhaul immigration policy.
In a 6-3 decision Tuesday, the court struck down an executive order signed by President Trump shortly after he took office in January 2025. The executive order prohibited people born in the United States whose parents have temporary legal status or are undocumented from automatically acquiring U.S. citizenship.
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But ahead of the Fourth of July holiday commemorating America’s 250th anniversary, the court’s decision reaffirmed what it means to be an American citizen — a principle based on the 14th Amendment of 1868, which ended the practice of slavery in the United States after the Civil War.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, praised America’s birthright citizenship practice. “The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘all persons born free in this land,'” he wrote. “Today I will keep that promise.”
What about Mr. Trump?
In line with his hard-line anti-immigrant policies, President Trump’s executive order said a child cannot claim birthright if one parent is “unlawfully present in the United States” and the other is not a citizen or “lawful permanent resident at the time of birth.”
It added that birthright citizenship cannot be passed on to a child if a parent’s stay is “lawful but temporary” through a tourist, student, or work visa and the other parent is not a U.S. citizen.
Birthright citizenship automatically grants U.S. citizenship to babies born in that country, regardless of the status of their parents, based on the British common law principle of “jus soli,” or “soil rights.” This is contrary to the “right of descent,” which states that a child’s nationality is determined by the nationality of his parents, regardless of where he was born.
President Trump has repeatedly argued that birthright citizenship allows undocumented immigrants access to the U.S. welfare state and is “robbing” taxpayers. Lawyers for the administration argued in court that the practice was based on a “misreading” of the Fourteenth Amendment, which 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 in which they reside.”
On behalf of the administration, U.S. Attorney General John Sauer argued that “subject to its jurisdiction” automatically excludes birthright citizenship for some immigrant groups, and that it should apply only to those who “take an oath of allegiance to the United States by domicile.”
Sauer also argued that granting citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil led to what he called “birth tourism,” or the arrival of “countless foreign nationals from potentially hostile countries” aiming to secure citizenship for their children.
How did President Trump react to this ruling?
President Trump said the Supreme Court’s decision was “too bad for our country” and suggested there may be other paths to pursuing the same goal, such as Congressional Republicans passing legislation that would limit who is eligible for citizenship at birth.
“Starting today, Congress must begin working to end birthright citizenship, which is costly and unfair to our nation,” Trump wrote. “They have my full and complete support!”
Birthright litigation has become critical to the Trump administration ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump attended the court’s oral arguments in early April, becoming the first sitting president to attend oral arguments in a case before the Supreme Court.
He was seen storming into the hearing just before writing on Truth Social: “We are the only country in the world stupid enough to recognize ‘natural-born’ citizenship!”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called the ruling “devastating and outrageous.” “American citizenship is not a universal birthright. It belongs only to Americans, and there is no provision in the Constitution that requires national self-destruction,” he wrote to X.
Miller told Al Jazeera that despite the ruling, the Trump administration will continue to “fight” to abolish birthright citizenship.
Could President Trump find another way to end birthright citizenship?
Rainer Bobock, a lecturer at the Robert Schumann Center for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, said the ruling was not surprising, but it was important because it “maintains an inclusive concept of America’s national identity that includes children born to illegal immigrants.”
Bobock said future legislation is unlikely to change that. “By deciding to entrench a clear and literal interpretation of the Constitution,[the court]appears to have closed the door for the Republican majority in Congress to limit birthright citizenship through regular legislation,” the analyst told Al Jazeera. “Therefore, a constitutional amendment would be required, but the chances of it being passed are virtually zero.”
Nando Sigona, a lecturer on immigration at the University of Birmingham, added: “Unless Congress pursues the very difficult path of constitutional reform that requires broad bipartisan support, the legislation alone is almost certain to immediately run into constitutional problems.”
Who benefits from the Supreme Court’s decision?
A joint study conducted by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and Penn State University in May 2025 predicted that if President Trump’s executive order is successful, an estimated 255,000 infants will be born without citizenship each year in the United States and the undocumented population will increase by 2.7 million by 2045.
Penn State estimates that Latino immigrants will be the most affected by this policy change, making up more than 90% of U.S.-born people without legal status by 2050.
According to the university, the Asian population has experienced the most relative growth of any other immigrant group, with 41 “illegal” births per 1,000 Asians without legal status, compared to 17 births per 1,000 for Latinos without legal status.
Aside from the affected communities, the ruling also appears to benefit the U.S. economy. The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) estimates that birthright citizenship beneficiaries contributed $7.7 trillion to the U.S. economy through income from 1975 to 2074.
What is the significance of the judgment?
Sigona said the ruling is important because it reaffirms that the Constitution, not the executive branch, defines the boundaries of American citizenship.
“By upholding birthright citizenship, the court reaffirmed a long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment dating back more than a century and rejected attempts to redefine constitutional rights through administrative litigation,” Sigona told Al Jazeera. “More broadly, it suggests that even in today’s highly polarized political climate, there are still constitutional limits to presidential authority over immigration.”
Culturally, Shaw said it’s also important to view the broader debate about birthright citizenship through the lens of each country’s unique history. In the case of the United States, the analyst said, “we need to look at the 14th Amendment in the light of what is essentially a civil war over slavery.”
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to codify the rights of black Americans. Until then, descendants of enslaved people were not considered U.S. citizens, but a separate class of people. The amendment reversed this and extended citizenship rights to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.”
Therefore, changing this fundamental tenet, which many see as woven into American identity and culture, is controversial. A Pew Research Center poll found that 56% of American adults opposed President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, while 43% supported it.
Are there birthright citizenship in other countries?
At least 30 other countries, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, have similar rights to birthright citizenship as the United States, according to the Pew Research Center. Joe Shaw, head of the UK’s Edinburgh Law School, said a significant number of Latin American countries had very similar arrangements with the US.
The lecturer, who is co-author of a UK Institute of International and Comparative Law research paper on birthright in Latin America, said, however, that each country has its own unique constitutional framework and range of legislative and administrative measures.
For example, Chile and Colombia differ from the United States in that they do not extend this constitutional right to “temporary aliens” or “aliens in transit.” “Given 21st century immigration practices, it is clear that these provisions can have significant exclusionary effects, depending on how they are used by national legislatures and executive bodies, and how ‘temporary’ is interpreted,” Shaw told Al Jazeera.
