Supreme Court rejects Trump's move to end birthright citizenship

Justices Affirm 14th Amendment in 6-3 Decision

The United States Supreme Court has struck down President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to end automatic birthright citizenship, upholding the principle that children born in the United States are automatically US citizens regardless of their parents' immigration status.

Upon taking office on January 20, 2025, Trump had signed the order seeking to bar those born in the US to parents on temporary legal statuses or without documentation from automatically receiving citizenship. The executive order never went into effect because every lower court judge who reviewed it concluded it was, in the words of one judge, "blatantly unconstitutional."

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Roberts was joined by fellow conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as all of the liberals on the court: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.

Majority Opinion and Dissents

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts traced the US practice of birthright citizenship to English common law, through the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 and the Supreme Court's 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. In his 26-page opinion, he said Trump administration lawyers and dissenting justices had offered insufficient evidence for their reinterpretation of longstanding law, writing: "The trouble is that there is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view."

An estimated 255,000 children born every year to noncitizen parents would have lost legal status under the order, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Dissenting from the decision were Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito. "The Court has made a serious mistake," Alito wrote in his dissent to the ruling in the case, known as Trump v. Barbara.

Trump responded on Truth Social, writing: "The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country. But we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation."

Sources:
CNBC: Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, blocks Trump order
NPR: Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship on constitutional grounds
Al Jazeera: US Supreme Court rules against Trump order to end birthright citizenship