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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld birthright citizenship, ruling that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen and rejecting President Donald Trump’s order to end the practice for many immigrants’ children. The court ruled 6-3, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion that affirmed a lower court’s decision to block the order.
Trump signed the executive order on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of his second term. It sought to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents who were in the country illegally or living here on temporary visas. The order never took effect because lower courts blocked it soon after he signed it.
Roberts grounded the decision in the 14th Amendment, which makes all persons born in the U.S. and subject to its jurisdiction citizens at birth. The court held that children born to parents who are in the country unlawfully or temporarily are subject to that jurisdiction and are citizens. He pointed to the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which reached the same result for a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants.
Roberts wrote that the arguments made by Trump and the dissenting justices echoed the losing side from more than a century ago. That view drew only a dissent in 1898, he wrote, and it is still not the law.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented. Thomas, joined by Gorsuch, argued the 14th Amendment was aimed mainly at formerly enslaved Black Americans and did not extend to the children of foreign temporary visitors. Alito called the decision a serious mistake and warned that it preserves a strong incentive to enter or remain in the country illegally.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed the order was unlawful but said it violated federal law rather than the Constitution. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a concurring opinion, joined in part by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Trump criticized the outcome on Truth Social, writing that the court “upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country.” He said Congress should pass legislation to end birthright citizenship and pledged his support.
Cecillia Wang of the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued against the order, welcomed the ruling. She said the win “belongs to all of us and to the American people.”
The policy would have affected a large number of newborns. The Migration Policy Institute estimated that about 255,000 children are born each year to noncitizen parents who could have been denied citizenship under the order. Birthright citizenship has been the settled understanding of the law for more than 150 years.
