Supreme Court Prepares to Rule on Birthright Citizenship, Setting Up One of the Term's Biggest Decisions

The last day of a consequential term

The Supreme Court will issue its final opinions of the 2025-2026 term beginning at 10 a.m. EDT Tuesday, with the birthright citizenship case heading a list of decisions that also includes rulings on transgender athlete bans and campaign financethehill +1. The marquee case — Trump v. Barbara — concerns an executive order President Trump signed on his first day back in office, which would end automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally or on temporary visasabcnews. Every lower court that has considered the order has struck it down, and the order has never gone into effectscotusblog.

What's at stake under the 14th Amendment

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, guarantees citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." For more than a century, courts and the federal government have read that language to confer citizenship on virtually every child born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomatsabcnews +1. Trump's order reinterprets the clause to exclude children whose parents lack citizenship or lawful permanent residence, arguing such parents are not fully "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United Statesabcnews. An estimated 255,000 children born each year to noncitizen parents would lose automatic citizenship under the order, according to the Migration Policy Institute, and some could be rendered stateless if their parents' home countries do not recognize them as citizens eitherabcnews +1.

How oral arguments went — and what to expect

When the case was argued on April 1, the majority of justices appeared skeptical of the administration's positionscotusblog. Chief Justice John Roberts challenged Solicitor General D. John Sauer over the practical basis for the order, noting that "birth tourism" was not a problem when the 14th Amendment was ratified and asking pointedly: "We have the same Constitution"scotusblog. Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested the challengers could prevail on a straightforward reading of the 1898 Wong Kim Ark precedent, which held that a child born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents was a citizenscotusblog. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that accepting the government's logic could eventually enable a future administration to pursue retroactive de-naturalization, a concern Sauer did not fully rebutscotusblog. Trump himself sat in the courtroom during argument — an extraordinary step — and later told reporters he expected to losethehill.

Other decisions expected Tuesday

Beyond birthright citizenship, the court will also rule on state bans on transgender athletes — West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox — and on campaign finance coordination limits in Watson v. Republican National Committeethehill +1. The rulings cap a term already marked by decisions on presidential firing power, Fed independence, and immigration protections for Haitian and Syrian migrantsscotusblog.