Supreme Court Shoots Down Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship was unconstitutional.

Trump attended the high court’s oral arguments about the case, Trump v. Barbara, on April 1, marking the first time the president of the United States had ever done so. Prior to the justices’ 6-3 ruling striking down Trump’s birthright citizenship order, some signaled during April’s oral arguments that they were skeptical about whether Trump had the power to end birthright citizenship through an executive order.

“If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion joined by four other justices. Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the result, but dissented on the reasoning.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito delivered a blistering dissent that highlighted national security risks posed by the ruling.

“Suppose that a person’s only connection to this country is that he was born here to a mother who was present just long enough to give birth and then quickly returned to her native country. Suppose that country is a strategic adversary or enemy of the United States. Suppose the child never visited the United States while growing up and was inculcated with hatred of this country,” Alito wrote. “According to the Court, that person is a citizen of the United States. He can enter and leave the country as he pleases. He can travel the world on a United States passport. Even if he plots to harm this country, he cannot be deprived of his status as a citizen, at least under current precedent.”

“The Court has repurposed the Fourteenth Amendment to protect its own set of preferred rights that the Reconstruction Congress never contemplated and that cannot find support in its text,” Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote. “Today, the Court does so again by recognizing a constitutional right to citizenship for the children of all foreign birth tourists and illegal aliens.”

Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred with the decision, claiming it was the “death knell” for the “inequitable” result sought by Thomas and Alito.

“Of course, the ultimate irony is that for all the talk about the detestable Dred Scott decision, the Government and the principal dissent propose a return to its core tenet. Their bottom line is that, for certain people, being born on American soil will not suffice to confer citizenship. It is that odious conclusion that the Citizenship Clause plainly rejects, as the Court explains,” Jackson wrote in the concurring opinion joined by Associate Justice Elena Kagan. “I add only that the Fourteenth Amendment’s universalist aims should forever be the death knell for this kind of claim—one that seeks to make bloodline the marker of birthright.”

“The America that was reborn from the rubble of the Civil War simply does not countenance that inequitable result,” Jackson continued. “Thankfully, a majority of the Court remembered this today, and has dutifully preserved the most basic animating principle of our Nation’s founding—that all human beings are created equal— once more.”

Trump issued his executive order ending birthright citizenship on Jan. 20, 2025, within hours of being inaugurated for his second term. The order was initially blocked through a series of nationwide injunctions, leading to a 2025 case before the Supreme Court in which the justices reined the practice in.

During oral arguments, Roberts noted that despite the changes, “it’s the same Constitution,” while Kavanaugh questioned the Trump administration citing how foreign countries handled citizenship.

Trump issued executive orders to address illegal immigration and border security aside from the birthright citizenship order on the first day of his second term, one of which designated Mexican drug cartels, the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua and the El Salvadoran prison gang MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations.

The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration on two other immigration cases Thursday, one involving asylum applications, the other on Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

As many as 250,000 children were born to illegal immigrants in the United States in 2023, according to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies, while another 70,000 were born to temporary visitors to the country. In February 2025, Republican Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany warned then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem that Chinese tourists were traveling to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to give birth and secure American citizenship for their children.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Supreme Court decision.