WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against U.S. President Donald Trump’s order to abolish birthright citizenship for all individuals born on U.S. soil.
The 6-3 ruling is a major blow to Trump and his efforts to reform U.S. immigration. Upon taking office on January 20, 2025, President Trump had signed an executive order that prohibited parents born in the United States from obtaining temporary legal status or automatically obtaining U.S. citizenship without documentation.
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The nine-judge Supreme Court’s decision upholds a lower court’s ruling that President Trump’s order violates the U.S. Constitution, as well as subsequent Supreme Court rulings on the issue.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, found that the practice of birthright citizenship in the United States dates back to British common law through the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 and the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898.
In a 26-page opinion, he said Trump administration lawyers and opposing Supreme Court justices presented insufficient evidence in reinterpreting the long-standing law.
“The problem is that there is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view,” he wrote.
“The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘all persons born free in this land,'” he wrote. “Today we keep that promise.”
Roberts was joined by fellow conservatives Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as liberals Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.
President Trump did not immediately react to the ruling, but earlier in the day he published an article in Truth Social magazine arguing that Congress could pass legislation to change birthright citizenship, but there is little evidence that there is anything close to political will among lawmakers.
“It’s already at the core of the nation’s identity.”
Trump administration lawyers had argued that the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to those born in the United States and “subject to its jurisdiction,” applied only to infants whose parents are U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
They argued that the Fourteenth Amendment was narrowly written to apply to newly freed slaves and was never intended to include all individuals born in the United States.
They further argued that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which established citizenship for men born on U.S. soil to Chinese parents in the late 1800s, does not affirm the current practice of birthright citizenship, as it has been interpreted for decades.
Their argument primarily hinged on the definitions of the terms “subject to jurisdiction,” “natural allegiance,” and “permanent residence.”
In his opinion, Roberts noted that Congress had ample opportunity to define terms to limit birthright citizenship, especially when drafting the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
“If Congress had intended citizenship to be dependent on a person’s residence, it is reasonable to expect that there would have been at least some debate on this issue, which is ‘sometimes a very difficult question to decide,'” he wrote.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a similar opinion, zeroed in on the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to apply only to freed slaves, arguing instead that its language reflects long-standing principles in American culture and law.
“Such universalist appeals were a conscious choice. Yes, black Americans suffered a unique injustice, and yes, they did.
They “fighted and bled” for the Confederacy and paid a heavy price for freedom,” she wrote.
“But the delegates did not rest on their laurels. Rather, they drew on the moral and political power of universal principles that were already at the core of the country’s identity.”
In a dissenting opinion, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the majority’s explanation was “not historically accurate” and said the 14th Amendment had been “transformed into a political project.”
“Today, the court took the unusual step of holding unconstitutional on its face the executive order excluding the children of temporary alien visitors and illegal aliens from citizenship,” he wrote.
“Many of the potential applications of the executive order are consistent with the original public meaning of the citizenship clause, so I respectfully disagree,” he said.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch also wrote dissenting opinions. Despite agreeing with the majority opinion, Kavanaugh wrote that he did not believe the Trump administration violated the U.S. Constitution, but it did violate the Immigration and Nationality Act.
He wrote that Congress “may amend or enact new laws creating exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to aliens.”
are in the country illegally or temporarily; ”
“But Congress has not yet done so,” he wrote.
“A Persistent Multigenerational Underclass”
Tuesday’s ruling is a major blow to President Trump as he grapples with his executive orders amid a broader effort to overhaul nearly all forms of immigration in the United States.
The court has previously won several immigration victories for the president in recent weeks, including effectively abolishing a special legal status known as “temporary protected status” for residents of some crisis-hit countries and allowing him to employ the controversial tactic of physically preventing asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil, where the government is legally obligated to grant asylum applications.
To emphasize the importance of this case, President Trump attended oral arguments in the case in early April, becoming the first sitting president to do so while the case is still pending before the Supreme Court.
Human rights groups welcomed the court’s decision. Cecilia Wang, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who is herself a birthright citizen and argued the challenge before the Supreme Court, said the ruling “reaffirms America’s fundamental promise: If you’re born here, you’re a citizen.”
Groups such as the ACLU had warned that a ruling in favor of Mr. Trump would have far-reaching implications, effectively creating a new stateless class in the United States and angering a bureaucracy unprepared to deal with such fundamental changes.
“Our brave clients and legal teams stand with the millions of people across the country who have represented one of our most cherished rights,” she said. “The Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship is strong.”
A study by the Pennsylvania Immigration Policy Institute released last May estimated that 255,000 children are born in the United States each year without citizenship under the mandate, increasing the undocumented population by 2.7 million by 2045.
The statement warned that the order “would create a permanent multigenerational underclass, with U.S.-born residents inheriting the social disadvantages inflicted by their parents and, over time, their grandparents and great-grandparents.”
