The United States Supreme Court has invalidated President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, ruling that children born in the country to undocumented migrants and parents on temporary visas are American citizens.
The apex court held that Mr Trump’s order, signed upon his assumption of office for his second term on January 20, 2025, violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The 6-3 decision marks a significant legal setback for Mr Trump, who since returning to office, cracked down on immigration and sought to end birth tourism.
Both conservative and liberal justices joined the majority opinion, while conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community,” Chief Justice John Roberts, who delivered the opinion, wrote.
“The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”
Mr Roberts maintained that under the constitution, “children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause.”
He added, “They are citizens at birth.”
Justice Alito, in a dissenting opinion, described the ruling as “one of the most important decisions in the history of the court” and, at the same time, “a serious mistake.”
He argued that “the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country.”
In his executive order last year, Mr Trump argued that babies born in the U.S. to undocumented migrants or parents on temporary visas were not automatically entitled to citizenship, saying the 14th Amendment’s phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” did not apply to them.
He directed federal agencies not to recognise U.S. citizenship for such children.
However, federal judges blocked implementation of the order, which was scheduled to take effect 30 days after it was signed.
On July 10, 2025, U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante ruled that “the executive order likely ‘contradicts the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the century-old untouched precedent that interprets it.’”
The Trump administration appealed the ruling on September 26, asking the apex court to review it. The request was granted on December 5, and the case was argued on April 1, 2026, with the president in attendance.
