The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that children born in the United States are citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment, even if their parents are in the country unlawfully or only temporarily. The divided decision rejected an order from President Donald Trump that had declared such children were not American citizens.
The majority opinion, co-authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, determined that birth on U.S. soil and being subject to U.S. law are sufficient for citizenship. Roberts wrote that birthright citizenship has historically depended primarily on birthplace, drawing on English common law and the intent behind the Fourteenth Amendment.
"Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,’" Roberts wrote for the court. "We keep that promise today."
However, the ruling exposed significant disagreements among the justices. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, among the dissenters, argued that birth alone is not enough to confer citizenship. They contended that a child's parents must possess a deeper political allegiance or relationship with the U.S.
Thomas, writing the main dissent, argued that the court overlooked evidence from Reconstruction-era debates suggesting that citizenship was contingent on a closer relationship to the country. He asserted that the Citizenship Clause was intended as a targeted remedy for formerly enslaved Black Americans to restore their citizenship and that Trump's executive order was consistent with the original meaning of the clause, particularly for children born to parents not domiciled in the U.S.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to address Thomas' dissent, arguing that his interpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments—misunderstands their broader purpose. Jackson countered that these amendments were intended as a fundamental reset to combat caste and subordination, not merely as a specific remedy for the injustices of slavery.
"The Reconstruction Amendments were an anti-caste, anti-subordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery," Jackson wrote. She further stated that a narrow, group-specific reading of the Citizenship Clause, as suggested by Thomas, diverges from the historical context of the amendments' ratification.