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Supreme Court blocks Trump birthright citizenship limits

The Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to narrow birthright citizenship, holding that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth.

Published about 2 hours ago
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Supreme Court blocks Trump birthright citizenship limits
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A constitutional line at the maternity ward

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth, striking down President Donald Trump’s attempt to narrow the 14th Amendment by executive order.scotusblog +1 Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that those children “satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause” because they are born on U.S. soil and subject to U.S. law.scotusblog The order, signed on Trump’s first day back in office in 2025, had never taken effect after lower courts blocked it while challenges moved forward.scotusblog +1

The decision in Trump v. Barbara turns one of the administration’s signature immigration fights into a constitutional defeat. The challenged order would have denied automatic citizenship when a mother was in the country illegally or on a temporary visa and the father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident.constitutioncenter Roberts framed the ruling as a reaffirmation of Reconstruction-era text and the 1898 Wong Kim Ark precedent, not a new expansion of citizenship.scotusblog

The majority leaned on Reconstruction history

Roberts traced birthright citizenship from English common law through the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment’s repudiation of Dred Scott.scotusblog He rejected the government’s argument that citizenship depended on a parent’s domicile or immigration status, writing that Congress used the broad language of birth in the United States and jurisdiction, not words such as “lawful,” “mother” or “temporary.”scotusblog

The ruling landed at the close of a term already defined by race, immigration and civil-rights disputes, including decisions on temporary protected status and voting-rights protections.abcnews NPR had listed the birthright case among the term’s biggest unresolved questions, noting that every lower-court judge to consider Trump’s order had concluded it could not stand.npr

A split conservative court leaves a political fight

Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that the order could not take effect, but he said the reason was statutory: Congress had not amended the federal citizenship law to create exceptions for children of people unlawfully or temporarily in the country.constitutioncenter Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented, arguing in different ways that the 14th Amendment did not require such a broad rule.constitutioncenter

The decision set off immediate political reaction. Trump called the ruling “too bad for our country” and urged Congress to act, while House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was “very disappointed” and pointed to “birthing tourism” as a concern.njspotlightnews New Jersey officials and immigrant-rights advocates celebrated the outcome, with Gov. Mikie Sherrill calling birthright citizenship a “foundational constitutional guarantee.”njspotlightnews