Supreme Court rejects Trump's bid to end birthright citizenship in landmark ruling

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In one of the most consequential constitutional decisions in decades, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship to nearly all children born on American soil, rejecting President Donald Trump's effort to deny citizenship to children whose parents are in the country unlawfully or temporarily.

In Trump v. Barbara, Chief Justice John Roberts authored the Court's opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson, striking down Executive Order 14160, which Trump signed on his first day back in office in January 2025. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment and dissented in part, while Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

The executive order sought to reinterpret the Constitution by declaring that children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants or certain temporary visa holders were not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States and therefore were not citizens at birth.

Instead, Roberts concluded that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has guaranteed birthright citizenship since its ratification in 1868 and that a parent's immigration status does not alter a child's constitutional right to citizenship.

At the center of the case was one sentence in the Fourteenth Amendment:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States..."

The Trump administration argued that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" excludes children born to parents who entered the country unlawfully or are only temporarily present.

The Court rejected that interpretation, concluding the phrase refers to virtually everyone born within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States except for a handful of longstanding exceptions, such as children of foreign diplomats or those born under the authority of a foreign sovereign. According to the majority, children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors are fully subject to U.S. laws and therefore satisfy the Constitution's citizenship requirement.

Much of Roberts' opinion focuses not on modern immigration policy but on legal history stretching back more than 400 years.

The Court traced the origins of birthright citizenship to English common law and the doctrine of jus soli—the "right of the soil"—under which nearly every child born within a sovereign's territory automatically became a subject of that nation.

According to the majority, that principle became part of American law following independence and remained the accepted rule throughout the nineteenth century. The opinion notes that even children born to foreign nationals temporarily visiting the country were historically recognized as citizens simply because they were born within the nation's borders.

Roberts also devoted substantial attention to one of the Supreme Court's most infamous decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that Black Americans descended from enslaved people could never become U.S. citizens.

According to the majority, the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was written specifically to overturn Dred Scott and permanently establish a broad rule of citizenship based on birth within the United States rather than ancestry or bloodline. The opinion cites debates from the Reconstruction Congress and writings by abolitionist Frederick Douglass as evidence that lawmakers intentionally adopted the common-law rule of birthright citizenship when drafting the amendment.

The majority also reaffirmed the Supreme Court's landmark 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

That case held that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents was a U.S. citizen despite federal laws excluding Chinese immigrants from naturalization.

Roberts described Wong Kim Ark as controlling precedent, stating it established that the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to nearly every child born in the United States regardless of the citizenship or immigration status of the parents. The Court declined the Trump administration's request to narrow or reinterpret that decision.

The majority concluded that nothing in the Constitution conditions citizenship on whether a child's mother or father is lawfully present in the United States.

Roberts observed that words frequently used in the executive order—including "mother," "father," "lawful," and "temporary"—do not appear anywhere in the Citizenship Clause itself.

The Court said that if the framers had intended to limit citizenship based on a parent's immigration status or domicile, they would have written those limitations into the Constitution. They did not.

A divided Court

Chief Justice Roberts' opinion was joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett and Jackson. Justice Kavanaugh filed a separate opinion concurring in the judgment and dissenting in part. Justice Jackson also wrote a concurring opinion, while Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch each filed dissents.

The dissenters argued that the Citizenship Clause should be interpreted more narrowly and maintained that citizenship should depend on a stronger connection—or "allegiance"—to the United States than mere birth within its borders.

What does this ruling mean?

The decision preserves the longstanding understanding that children born in the United States automatically become American citizens regardless of whether their parents are U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, temporary visa holders or undocumented immigrants.

It also prevents the executive branch from changing constitutional citizenship rules through executive action alone.

Any future attempt to alter birthright citizenship would almost certainly require either a constitutional amendment or a future Supreme Court willing to overturn more than a century of precedent.

Beyond immigration, the ruling reinforces the Court's reliance on constitutional text, historical context and longstanding precedent when interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment. It also represents one of the most significant constitutional rulings on citizenship since Wong Kim Ark was decided in 1898.

The Court affirmed the lower court's injunction blocking enforcement of Executive Order 14160, ensuring that children born in the United States continue to receive citizenship at birth under the Constitution.