US Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump's Birthright Citizenship Order, Upholds 14th Amendment

In a landmark decision, the US Supreme Court has ruled that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the country are entitled to US citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. The judgment declared unconstitutional an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on his first day back in office in January 2025, which sought to deny citizenship to such children.

The case, Trump v. Barbara, was decided by a 5-4 majority. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, held that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to nearly everyone born on US soil, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. The Court upheld a previous ruling of the US District Court for the District of New Hampshire, which had blocked the executive order and protected a nationwide class of affected children.

Trump's executive order, titled "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship," directed federal agencies not to recognise citizenship for children born in the US if their mothers were either unlawfully present or in the country on a temporary legal status, unless the father was a US citizen or lawful permanent resident.

The Supreme Court rejected this interpretation, relying on the historical meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and earlier precedents. Chief Justice Roberts referred to the 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which recognised birthright citizenship for a child born in the US to Chinese immigrant parents. He also noted that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted after the Civil War to overturn the discriminatory reasoning of Dred Scott v. Sandford and to guarantee citizenship to all persons born in the United States.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote a separate concurring opinion stating that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended not only to end slavery but also to eliminate systems of caste and social subordination.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that the executive order was unlawful but said the Court should have struck it down based on federal statutory law instead of deciding the constitutional issue.

In dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch argued that the Citizenship Clause should not automatically apply to children born to parents who are only temporarily or unlawfully present in the United States. They maintained that the Constitution permits Congress to place limits on birthright citizenship and warned that the ruling could encourage "birth tourism."

Since its issuance in January 2025, Trump's executive order had never taken effect because lower federal courts consistently blocked its implementation. The Supreme Court's ruling now permanently invalidates the order and reaffirms the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship in the United States.