Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump's Birthright Citizenship Executive Order
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Constitution guarantees automatic citizenship to children born in the United States, striking down President Trump's executive order. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that citizenship is 'the right to have rights' and the Framers of the 14th Amendment intended to protect all children born on U.S. soil.
The Ruling
In a sharp rebuke to President Trump, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution guarantees automatic birthright citizenship to virtually all children born in the United States. In its 6-to-3 decision issued on June 30, 2026, the court struck down the president's 2025 executive order, which sought to strip citizenship from American children born to undocumented parents.
The Court's Reasoning
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court's 6-3 opinion, citing both the colonists' demands for the "rights of Englishmen" as well as the abolitionists lauding of the "ancient and universal" rule of citizenship by birth alone. Chief Justice John Roberts, calling citizenship "the right to have rights," wrote for the court that "the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to 'every free-born person in this land.' We keep that promise today."
Constitutional Foundation
The men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution after the Civil War defined citizenship in broad terms on purpose, rejecting the views of those who wanted to limit citizenship. The decision in the Wong Kim Ark case was so widely accepted that even in periods of great hostility to immigrants, the notion of birthright citizenship remained untouchable. So much so that in World War II, when Japanese citizens were held as enemy aliens in detention camps in the United States, their newborn children were automatically granted American citizenship because they were born on U.S. soil.
Political Impact
Chief Justice John Roberts managed to shut down the president's first-day executive order with only one of the court's conservatives — Justice Amy Coney Barrett — on board with his opinion. The court's three liberal justices also joined that decision. The deputy director of ACLU's immigrants' rights project, Cody Wofsy, said the organization doesn't "anticipate that there will be a round two of this fight over birthright citizenship — the Supreme Court has rejected it and rejected it emphatically."