Supreme Court crushes Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in brutal defeat for the president
The Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, dealing a major blow to the administration’s radical vision of the nation’s structure.
In a landmark 6-3 decision, the justices halted the President’s attempt to end birthright citizenship on the grounds that it was clearly unconstitutional and out of bounds.
Constitutional protection was secured by the 14th Amendment and ratified in 1868 to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves; but has since been applied to anyone born on or within U.S. territory.
It affects approximately 150,000 noncitizen children born in the United States each year.
The decision is a major defeat for Trump and comes after the high court ruled against him in a number of key cases, including invalidating his broad tariff regime and blocking efforts to oust Lisa Cook from the Fed board.
Trump first sought to end it with executive order on Inauguration Day in 2025; This move was later rejected by lower courts as unconstitutional.
‘Citizenship, then and now,’ said conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, ‘was the right to have the rights to participate freely in our political community.’
“The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment made this promise “to every person born free in this land,” Roberts added. ‘Today we keep that promise.’
Birthright citizenship was enshrined in the 14th Amendment and ratified in 1868 to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves; but has since been applied to anyone born on or within U.S. territory.
Roberts was joined in the majority by Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett and liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the majority in part but dissented in part.
The stakes of the case were so important that it put Supreme Court precedent on a collision course with the expansion of executive power.
The president made history in April by becoming the first president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court in person; This is a sign of how important the case is to him.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett are seen attending the 2026 State of the Union event.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House
Protesters are seen demonstrating against Trump’s immigration policies
But when he looked into the faces of the Judges, including the judges he had appointed, the judges expressed their doubts.
Trump’s case was based on a narrow interpretation of the Citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are citizens.’
The president’s legal team has argued that the children were not ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States when they were born.
They argued that ‘subject to jurisdiction’ meant full allegiance to the United States, and that parents and their children who were in the United States illegally were ineligible for this right.
Opponents argued that a ruling in Trump’s favor would upend long-standing notions of citizenship and have immediate, operational consequences for babies born in the United States, giving Congress and the administration impetus to immediately clarify the status of newborns.
After Trump signed the citizenship executive act in February 2025, states and civil rights groups, including the ACLU, immediately challenged the directive. The order never came into full force.
Trump v Barbara pitted Trump’s order against a group of affected families across the country, backed by the ACLU and other groups. These groups argue that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, and that it has been read that way for more than a century and has since been ratified by laws passed by Congress.
Most of the justices were skeptical of the Trump administration’s claims during oral arguments on April 1.
Supreme Court justices pose for group portraits in 2022
In what turned out to be a meaningful conversation, Chief Justice John Roberts told U.S. Attorney John Sauer at the beginning of oral arguments that he found a key argument from the Trump administration “interesting.”
Roberts said he struggled to understand the Trump administration’s legal position on the 14th Amendment’s exceptions to birthright citizenship, citing exceptions the administration listed, including children of ambassadors, children born on warships and other very limited groups.
“I’m not quite sure how you can get to this large group from such small, idiosyncratic samples,” Roberts said.
“We’re in a new world now,” Sauer told Roberts.
‘It’s a new world,’ Roberts said in response, ‘but it’s the same Constitution.’
Trump nominees Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch also expressed skepticism about the administration’s claims in April.
Judge Kavanaugh cited the passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), stating that it essentially mirrors the text of the 14th Amendment and the text of the 1898 case.
The president made history in April by becoming the first president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court in person
Trump speaks at an event in the Oval Office of the White House on June 22
‘If the Congress wanted to disagree with this view, it could have been expected to use a different expression.’ [precedent set in] On what the scope of birthright citizenship or citizenship should be,” Kavanaugh said.
After a brief back-and-forth conversation, Kavanaugh eventually told Sauer, “I don’t see the relevance of this as a legal, constitutional interpretive issue.”
