The United States Supreme Court has dealt President Donald Trump another major legal setback, striking down his executive order seeking to restrict automatic citizenship for children born on American soil.
In a 6–3 decision delivered on Tuesday, the nation’s highest court ruled that Trump’s January 20, 2025 executive order violated the U.S. Constitution, affirming that the 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship to nearly everyone born in the United States.
Five of the six justices in the majority held that the executive order was unconstitutional because it directly conflicted with the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed the order was unlawful but based his opinion on federal statutory law rather than the Constitution.
The ruling marks the third major Supreme Court defeat for Trump in recent months, following the court’s February decision invalidating his sweeping tariff policy and Monday’s ruling preventing him from immediately removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from office.
Trump signed the executive order on the first day of his second term in office, seeking to reinterpret the Constitution by limiting birthright citizenship to children with at least one parent who is either a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident.
Under the proposed policy, children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants or parents temporarily in the country would no longer have automatically qualified for U.S. citizenship.
However, the order was immediately challenged by several states and civil rights organisations and was blocked by lower federal courts before it could take effect.
The Supreme Court upheld those rulings, reaffirming the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
The Citizenship Clause was adopted after the American Civil War to guarantee citizenship and equal rights for formerly enslaved Black Americans. For more than a century, it has been understood to extend citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States, with limited exceptions such as children of foreign diplomats.
The court’s decision also reaffirmed its landmark 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which established that a child born in the U.S. to Chinese immigrant parents was an American citizen under the Constitution.
Trump’s order faced multiple legal challenges from Democratic-led states and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which represented families whose children would have been directly affected by the policy.
Every lower court that considered the matter ruled against the Trump administration before the case ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which has now brought the constitutional dispute to a decisive close.
[NBC]
