Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Bid to End Birthright Citizenship

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the right to citizenship for people born in the United States, rejecting an executive order by President Donald Trump that sought to undo the longstanding constitutional principle for children born to many immigrants.

“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” the majority decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, said.

Roberts was joined by fellow conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with the court’s three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, forming the majority ruling on Fourteenth Amendment grounds.

Another conservative, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote separately that he did not believe Trump’s executive order violated the Fourteenth Amendment, but said it “does contravene a federal statute” adopted in 1940 addressing the citizenship of people born in the US.

The court’s three remaining conservatives, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, each wrote dissenting opinions. “The Court has made a serious mistake,” Alito wrote in his dissent to the ruling, in the case known as Trump v. Barbara.

The justices had signalled during oral arguments in April that they would affirm automatic citizenship for individuals born in the US to non-citizen parents. Trump attended those arguments in person, becoming the first sitting president ever to do so.

Had Trump’s order been upheld, it would have left tens of thousands of babies born in the US each month to undocumented immigrants or visitors without American citizenship.

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”