The United States Supreme Court has struck down President Donald Trump’s order abolishing birthright citizenship, dealing a significant blow to a measure he signed on his first day back in office.
The court ruled 6-3 that the directive was unlawful, in the case known as Trump v. Barbara. Five justices found it breached the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, while a sixth concluded it violated federal law rather than the Constitution.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said children born in the country to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth. He wrote that citizenship had always been “the right to have rights”, tracing the guarantee to the amendment’s post-Civil War framers.
Roberts was joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the court’s three liberal justices. Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed the order was unlawful though on statutory grounds, while Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
Alito called the majority opinion “a serious mistake” in one of three separate dissents from the court’s conservatives.
Trump signed the order in January 2025, seeking to deny citizenship to children born to mothers in the country illegally or on temporary visas whose fathers were neither citizens nor legal residents. The measure never took effect, having been blocked by every lower court that reviewed it.
Around 255,000 children born each year could have lost their claim to citizenship under the order, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The ruling leaves in place the long-standing understanding that almost anyone born on US soil is a citizen.
The principle of automatic birthright citizenship, known as jus soli, sets the United States apart from much of Europe. No European Union member state grants citizenship automatically to every child born on its territory, with Ireland the last to end the practice after a 2004 referendum.
It was the second signature initiative of Trump’s second term to be struck down by the court, which invalidated many of his tariffs in February. He has since urged Congress to act, and Republican senators have moved to pursue a constitutional amendment that would restrict citizenship to the children of citizens and legal residents.
