The United States Supreme Court has upheld birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to deny automatic American citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily.
In a divided ruling on Tuesday, the court reaffirmed the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment, holding that anyone born on U.S. soil, with very limited exceptions, is automatically a citizen.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said the Constitution guarantees citizenship to those born in the United States, describing it as a fundamental promise that has endured since the adoption of the 14th Amendment after the Civil War.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote, adding that the court was preserving a constitutional promise made to “every free-born person in this land.”
Three conservative justices dissented, arguing that the restrictions should have been allowed to take effect.
Trump’s executive order, signed on the first day of his second term, formed part of his administration’s broader immigration crackdown. However, it had been blocked by several lower courts before reaching the Supreme Court and never came into effect.
The administration argued that children born to non-citizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore should not automatically receive citizenship. The Supreme Court rejected that argument, relying on decades of legal precedent, including the landmark 1898 Wong Kim Ark decision.
The ruling means children born in the United States will continue to receive automatic citizenship regardless of their parents’ immigration status, except in limited cases such as children of foreign diplomats.
Experts estimate that more than 250,000 babies born in the U.S. each year could have been affected had Trump’s executive order been upheld.
