The Supreme Court is likely to hear oral arguments early next year and will rule in June on the issue, which several lower courts have blocked as unconstitutional.
Published December 5, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to rule on the legality of President Donald Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship as the Republican administration continues its widespread immigration crackdown.
After Friday’s announcement, the conservative-dominated court did not set a date for oral arguments in the major case, but it will likely be early next year, with a decision likely in June.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Several lower courts have blocked as unconstitutional President Trump’s attempts to limit the law that says anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a U.S. citizen.
On January 20, his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order stating that children born to parents in the United States illegally or on temporary visas will not automatically become U.S. citizens.
A lower court ruled that the order violated the 14th Amendment. That article states, “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.”
President Trump’s executive order is premised on the idea that illegal immigrants and those in the United States on visas are excluded from this category because they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the state.
The Supreme Court rejected such a narrow definition in a landmark 1898 case.
The Trump administration has also argued that the 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War, refers to the rights of former slaves, not the children of illegal immigrants or temporary visitors to the United States.
Trump’s attorney general, John Sauer, argued in a court brief that “the mistaken extension of birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens has caused great harm to the United States.”
“Most obviously, it created powerful incentives for illegal immigration and undermined the territorial integrity of the United States,” Sauer said.
President Trump’s executive order was scheduled to go into effect on February 19, but was halted after federal judges ruled against the administration in multiple lawsuits.
District Judge John Coughner, who heard the case in Washington state, called the president’s executive order “plainly unconstitutional.”
Conservatives hold a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, and three of the justices were appointed by President Trump.
Cecilia Wang, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spearheaded legal challenges to attempts to abolish birthright citizenship, said she hopes the Supreme Court will “strike down this harmful order once and for all.”
“Federal courts across the country have consistently rejected President Trump’s attempts to strip away this core constitutional protection,” Wang said.
“The President’s actions violate core American rights that have been part of the Constitution for more than 150 years.”
The Supreme Court sided with Mr. Trump in a series of decisions this year, allowing him to implement various policies that had been blocked by lower courts that questioned their legality.
These policies include Trump’s revocation of temporary humanitarian protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, deportations of immigrants to countries other than their own, and domestic immigration enforcement raids.
