Supreme Court rules Trump's birthright citizenship order unconstitutional
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, upholding lower courts that had blocked it . The order, signed on Trump’s first day in office in January 2025, sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are undocumented or in the country on temporary status.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, grounded the decision in the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, and the 1898 precedent United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which established that nearly all children born on US soil are citizens regardless of their parents’ status. Roberts wrote that there is “scant evidence” for the administration’s reinterpretation of that long-settled principle.
The ruling forecloses the executive branch from rewriting citizenship rules by decree; any change would now require a constitutional amendment or, at minimum, an act of Congress that would itself face challenge. Trump suggested Congress could take up the question, but there is little legislative appetite to do so. The decision is the most consequential setback yet to the administration’s immigration agenda.