Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, blocks Trump order

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the right to citizenship for people born in the United States, rejecting an executive order by President Donald Trump that sought to undo that long-standing constitutional principle for children born to many immigrants.

“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” the majority decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts said.

The citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was adopted in 1868, says, “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 wherein they reside.”

Roberts was joined by his fellow conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with the court’s three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in the majority opinion on 14th Amendment grounds.

Another conservative, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote that he did not believe Trump’s executive order violated the 14th Amendment, but that it “does contravene a federal statute” adopted in 1940 that addresses the citizenship of people born in the U.S.

The other three conservatives on the court, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, all wrote dissenting opinions.

“The Court has made a serious mistake,” Alito wrote in his dissent to the ruling in the case, known as Trump v. Barbara.

The court’s justices had signaled during oral arguments in April that they would affirm that individuals born in the United States to non-U.S. citizens are automatically granted citizenship.

Trump attended the oral arguments, the first sitting president ever to do so.

If Trump’s order had been upheld, it would have left tens of thousands of babies
born in the U.S. each month to undocumented immigrants or visitors without American citizenship.

“The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post reacting to the ruling.

“But we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process,” Trump said. “No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary! Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support!”

Cecillia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union national legal director, who argued against Trump’s order to the Supreme Court, said, “This victory belongs to all of us and to the American people,” in an interview with MS NOW’s “On the Line.”

“We’ve already heard from our three clients, who are the representatives of the class here, who all have said, as your friends did, they’ve been under this cloud where the president of the United States was trying to undo this foundational right that all Americans have relied on for 150 years,” said Wang, who herself has birthright citizenship.

“And so all of them are gratified by this decision, and I want to congratulate everyone who was part of our class and the plaintiff class, and again all of the Americans who stood up in support of birthright citizenship,” said Wang, who herself has birthright citizenship.

Trump, on his first day back in the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, signed an executive order seeking to undo birthright citizenship.

The order said that 30 days after its effective date, babies born in the U.S. were not entitled to be issued citizenship documents if their parents had immigrated illegally or were undocumented workers.