The US Supreme Court has dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, rejecting his bid to curb birthright citizenship in the United States and preserving a guarantee that has long stood at the heart of American life.
The 6-3 decision is the second time this year the court has struck down a signature move by the US president, after its February ruling that voided his far-reaching global tariffs.
The justices left in place a lower court order blocking Mr Trump’s executive action, which had instructed federal agencies to deny citizenship to children born in the United States when neither parent is a US citizen or lawful permanent resident, commonly known as a “green card” holder.
Opponents of the order argued that it clashes with the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which grants citizenship to people born in the United States who are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights – to freely participate in our political community,” adding that the authors of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in the land.
“We keep that promise today,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
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Mr Trump denounced the ruling and urged the Republican-controlled Congress to advance one of his defining anti-immigration goals through legislation.
“The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Mr Trump, who has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of presidential authority at home and abroad, signed the order last year on his first day back in office as part of a broader drive to tighten both legal and illegal immigration.
Chief Justice John Roberts said Donald Trump’s directive runs afoul of the 14th Amendment language in the US Constitution
Critics have long argued that the Republican president’s immigration policies are shaped by racial and religious bias.
Those challenging the order said the Supreme Court had already resolved the issue in the 1898 case United States v Wong Kim Ark, which held that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship on people born on US soil, including the children of foreign nationals.
Chief Justice Roberts pointed directly to that 1898 precedent.
“Not surprisingly, then, in the 128 years since, we have repeatedly understood the rule of Wong Kim Ark to guarantee citizenship to all children born in the United States and subject to its power,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
“We see no reason to depart from that view today.”
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that there was “scant evidence” backing the Trump administration’s “dramatically revisionist view” of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship language and its effort to narrow birthright citizenship.
“If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the outcome rejecting Mr Trump’s order, though he broke with the court’s reasoning.
In a concurring opinion, he said the directive violated a separate federal statute that codifies birthright citizenship, rather than the 14th Amendment itself.
Donald Trump’s effort to limit birthright citizenship was turned back in a 6-3 decision at the US Supreme Court
The court stepped into one of the nation’s most fundamental questions – who counts as an American citizen – just ahead of the 4 July holiday marking the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding.
Before the ruling, some experts had estimated that Trump’s directive could affect the legal status of as many as 250,000 babies born each year and force millions of other families to prove the citizenship status of their newborn children.
Challenge centred on class-action lawsuit filed by New Hampshire parents and children
The case before the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, arose from a class-action lawsuit in New Hampshire brought by parents and children who said their citizenship rights were put at risk by Mr Trump’s directive.
The 14th Amendment has for generations been read as guaranteeing citizenship to babies born in the United States, with only narrow exceptions, including children of foreign diplomats and members of an enemy occupying force.
The disputed provision, known as the Citizenship Clause, says: “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
The administration argued that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means birth on US soil alone does not automatically guarantee citizenship, excluding children of immigrants who are in the country illegally or who are lawfully present only on a temporary basis, such as university students or workers on visas.
The administration also argued that citizenship belongs only to children of people whose “primary allegiance” is to the United States, including citizens and permanent residents. Its lawyers said that allegiance is established through “lawful domicile,” which they defined as “lawful, permanent residence within a nation, with intent to remain”.
When the Supreme Court heard the case on 1 April, Mr Trump became the first sitting president to attend arguments before the nation’s highest court, though he left midway through, shortly after the lawyer opposing the administration began speaking.
Clarence Thomas, associate justice of the US Supreme Court, is seen leaving the US Capitol in Washington today
During the hearing, US Solicitor General D John Sauer, arguing for the administration, said the broad guarantee of citizenship for nearly any baby born on US soil had fuelled what he described as a large “birth tourism” industry.
Mr Sauer said that “uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States in recent decades” in order to secure citizenship for their children.
Pressed on how significant “birth tourism” had become, Mr Sauer mainly pointed to media reports and acknowledged that “no one knows for sure”.
Trump administration argued 1898 precedent backed the order
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War of 1861 to 1865, which ended slavery in the United States, and it overturned the infamous 1857 Supreme Court ruling that people of African descent could never be US citizens.
At arguments, Mr Sauer said the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment had a narrower original purpose, contending it was adopted “to grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and their children, whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile here”.
The Trump administration maintained that the 1898 ruling actually supported Mr Trump’s order because, under the court’s account in that case, Wong Kim Ark’s parents had permanent domicile and residence in the United States at the time of his birth.
Some justices signalled scepticism about that reading during the arguments, including conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who told Mr Sauer: “Well, I’m not sure how much you want to rely on Wong Kim Ark.”
For years, Mr Trump had warned that he wanted to narrow the category of people entitled to citizenship at birth.
Mr Trump wrote on social media last year: “Birthright Citizenship was not meant for people taking vacations to become permanent Citizens of the United States of America, and bringing their families with them, all the time laughing at the ‘SUCKERS’ that we are!”
“But the drug cartels love it! We are, for the sake of being politically correct, a STUPID Country but, in actuality, this is the exact opposite of being politically correct, and it is yet another point that leads to the dysfunction of America,” Trump wrote.
In July 2025, Concord, New Hampshire-based US District Judge Joseph Laplante allowed the challenge to Mr Trump’s order brought by the plaintiffs before him to proceed as a class action, clearing the way for the policy to be blocked nationwide.
