Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s proposed
limits
[July 01, 2026]
By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a broad
conception of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s
executive order declaring that children born to people who are in the
United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
By a 6-3 vote, the court struck down Trump’s order. A bare majority of
five justices, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, held
that the long-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment, adopted after
the Civil War, makes a citizen of anyone born in the country, with very
limited exceptions,
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely
participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth
Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this
land,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, citing
congressional debate over the amendment, “We keep that promise today.”
A sixth justice, Brett Kavanaugh, disagreed about the constitutional
ruling, but pointed to a federal law that he said broadly conveys
birthright citizenship.
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have
upheld Trump’s proposed restrictions.
“The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially
unconstitutional the President’s Order excluding from citizenship the
children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens,” Justice
Clarence Thomas wrote in a 91-page dissent, more than three times as
long as Roberts' opinion. “In doing so, the Court adds to the sad
history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood
to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been
repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did
not support.”
The Republican president's restrictions had been blocked by several
lower courts and had not taken effect anywhere in the U.S.
Trump said the decision was “too bad for our Country” and wrongly
suggested that Congress could “easily” address it with legislation. The
majority decision rests on constitutional grounds. It would take an
amendment to overcome the decision.
During arguments in April, both conservative and liberal justices
questioned the order’s legality in a momentous case that was magnified
by Trump’s unprecedented attendance in the courtroom.
The case framed another test of Trump’s assertions of executive power
that defy long-standing precedent for a court with a conservative
majority and a robust view of presidential power that has largely ruled
in his favor. In the notable exceptions when the court has not, Trump
has responded with starkly personal criticisms of the justices.
The justices ruled on Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New
Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions.
The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on the first day of
his second term, is part of his administration’s broad immigration
crackdown.
Birthright citizenship was the first Trump immigration-related policy to
reach the court for a final ruling. The justices previously struck down
global tariffs Trump had imposed under an emergency powers law that had
never been used that way.
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The U.S. Supreme Court is seen Monday, June 29, 2026, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Trump reacted furiously to the late February tariffs decision,
saying he was ashamed of the justices who ruled against him and
calling them unpatriotic.
He also seemed to recognize the court was likely to rule against him
on birthright citizenship, too, using his Truth Social platform to
criticize “dumb judges and justices” and wealthy pregnant women from
China and elsewhere who come to the U.S. to give birth so their
newborns will have American citizenship.
Trump’s order would have upended widely held views that the 14th
Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born in the U.S.,
excluding only the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a
foreign occupying force.
The amendment was intended to ensure that Black people, including
former slaves, had citizenship, though the Citizenship Clause is
written more broadly. “All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside,” it reads.
In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down Trump's
executive order as illegal. The decisions have invoked the high
court’s 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which held that the U.S.-born
child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.
Roberts, joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberal
justices, said the amendment's language, the historical context and
the 1898 case make clear that children born to parents illegally or
temporarily in the U.S. “are citizens at birth.”
But there was only a bare majority of five justices on the
constitutional question.
Kavanaugh sided with the majority because of a federal law that
makes those children citizens. But he joined the dissenters in
finding that Trump's order does not violate the Constitution. His
view would enable a future Congress to change the law to restrict
birthright citizenship.
The Trump administration had argued that the common view of
citizenship is wrong, asserting that children of noncitizens are not
“subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore are
not entitled to citizenship.
More than one-quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year
would have been affected by the executive order, according to
research by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State
University’s Population Research Institute.
While Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his
rhetoric and actions, the birthright citizenship restrictions also
would have applied to people who are legally in the United States,
including students and applicants for green cards, or permanent
resident status.
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