President Donald Trump’s controversial attempt to restrict birthright citizenship was blocked by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, with the justices ruling 6–3 that his executive order violated the constitutional guarantee of citizenship for people born on US soil.
The decision, issued Tuesday, reaffirmed the 14th Amendment’s long-standing interpretation that children born in the United States are citizens regardless of whether their parents are residing there unlawfully or temporarily.
Under the ruling, SCOTUS struck down Executive Order 14160, issued on Jan. 20, 2025, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which had directed federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born on US soil unless one parent was a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion that “citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights,” saying the authors of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to every free person born on US soil. “We keep that promise today,” he wrote.
With five justices backing Robert, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who agreed with overturning the executive order, differed from the majority’s reasoning on grounds that the order conflicted with federal law rather than the 14th Amendment itself. Three others dissented.
The ruling came in “Trump v. Barbara,” a class-action lawsuit brought by families and children who would have been denied citizenship under the executive order, after a lower court blocked the order’s enforcement for the affected groups.
The Trump administration had relied on a narrow interpretation of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment, arguing that it does not cover the children of unauthorized immigrants or holders of temporary status, such as foreign students and workers. The court, however, said the text of the amendment contains no restrictions such as “mother,” “father,” “lawful” or “temporary,” the terms on which the executive order was based.
Estimates published before the ruling suggested that Trump’s order would have threatened the legal status of around 250,000 newborns each year and imposed additional burdens on millions of families to prove their children’s eligibility for citizenship.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump described the ruling as “too bad for our country,” calling on Congress to intervene and restrict birthright citizenship through new legislation. He said a constitutional amendment would be a “long and unwieldy” process and was unnecessary.
However, the court’s focus on the text of the 14th Amendment means any alternative legislative effort would likely face a renewed constitutional challenge.
Cecilia Wang, the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued on behalf of the challengers, said the decision “reaffirms a fundamental American promise: if you are born here, you are a citizen,” adding that the president does not have the authority to amend the Constitution by executive order.
The citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment dates back to the years that followed the US Civil War, when it was adopted to undo the effects of the infamous Dred Scott ruling, which denied citizenship rights to enslaved African Americans.
In 1898, SCOTUS entrenched the principle in “United States v. Wong Kim Ark,” affirming that birth on US soil automatically grants citizenship, with narrow exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats or hostile occupying forces.
Despite the importance of the ruling, it does not limit the Trump administration’s broader immigration policies.
In the same week, SCOTUS issued separate rulings allowing the administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for thousands of migrants from Haiti and Syria and upholding the government’s authority to reject asylum applications at border crossings in certain circumstances.
