The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. via executive order, upholding more than a century of legal precedent and national tradition. The 6-3 ruling reaffirms that babies born on American soil are automatically U.S. citizens.
The decision marks a setback for Trump, who had sought the court's support for his early-term order and attended oral arguments in the case, becoming the first sitting president to do so. Trump had contended that children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary visitors, such as tourists and foreign students, do not qualify for citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, states that all "persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are citizens. Congress later codified this language into federal citizenship law in 1940.
The administration's argument was that children born to parents who are not U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. because they still owe political allegiance to a foreign nation. However, the Supreme Court had previously rejected this argument in an 1898 decision.
In the landmark Wong Kim Ark v. U.S. decision, Justice Horace Gray wrote, "The [14th] Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States."
Immigrant advocates and civil liberties groups had warned that the policy change would impact hundreds of thousands of children born annually to non-citizen parents. They also cautioned it could create significant bureaucratic challenges for older Americans, who rely on birth certificates to prove their citizenship. According to the Migration Policy Institute, an estimated 255,000 children born each year to non-citizen parents could have lost legal status under the order, potentially leading to some being born stateless.
Every lower court that reviewed Trump's order had deemed it unlawful and issued injunctions to block its implementation. The Supreme Court's decision preserves the existing legal status quo regarding birthright citizenship.