The United States Supreme Court has struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, ruling 6-3 that the president overstepped his authority.
The decision, announced on 30th June 2026, represents a major blow to Trump’s effort to transform immigration policy and upholds the long-standing interpretation that anyone born on American soil is a citizen.
Trump had signed the executive order on 20th January 2025, his first day in office, seeking to bar those born in the US to parents on temporary legal statuses or without documentation from automatically receiving citizenship. The order was immediately challenged in court, and lower courts had blocked its implementation.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, tracing the US practice of birthright citizenship to English common law, through the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, and the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
In his opinion, Roberts said Trump administration lawyers and dissenting justices had offered insufficient evidence for a “dramatically revisionist view” of the law.
“The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,'” Roberts wrote. “We keep that promise today.”
The majority included Roberts, the court’s three liberal justices (Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson), and conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Three conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Alito, in a biting opinion, wrote that “the court has made a serious mistake” that “will seriously affect the country’s future.”
Thomas, in a 91-page dissent joined by Gorsuch, said the majority “devalues” citizenship as understood by the amendment’s framers.
Justice Kavanaugh concurred in the outcome but disagreed that the Constitution barred Trump’s order, suggesting Congress could potentially limit birthright citizenship by statute.
Birthright citizenship, enshrined in the 14th Amendment, grants citizenship to anyone born on US soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The practice has been in place for over 150 years and is a cornerstone of American immigration law.
If the Supreme Court had upheld Trump’s order, those born to parents who are undocumented or on temporary visas would have been considered unlawful residents, significantly increasing the undocumented population over time.
Trump did not immediately respond to the ruling, but earlier in the day he posted an article on his Truth Social platform arguing that Congress could pass legislation changing birthright citizenship. However, there is little evidence of sufficient political will among lawmakers to do so.
The ruling leaves in place the understanding that anyone born in the United States is a citizen. While the decision is a significant loss for the Trump administration, the divided opinions suggest the issue is far from settled, and future legal and legislative battles are likely.
For now, the 14th Amendment’s guarantee remains intact.
