Supreme Court Defends Constitutional Rights, Blocks Trump’s Attack on Birthright Citizenship
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s xenophobic executive order restricting citizenship, reaffirming the 14th Amendment’s protection for all people born in the U.S.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday delivered a powerful rebuke to President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, rejecting his executive order that sought to strip birthright citizenship from children born in the U.S. to non-citizens and undocumented immigrants. The 6-3 ruling declared the order unlawful under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which has long protected the rights of all people born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ status.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, condemned the administration’s attempt to undermine a fundamental civil right, noting the administration offered 'scant evidence' to justify its radical reinterpretation of long-standing law. Roberts emphasized that citizenship is the foundation of participation in the political community, and reminded the nation that the 14th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War to guarantee rights for formerly enslaved people—a promise that must endure for all marginalized communities today.
Three hardline conservative justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch—would have upheld Trump’s order, clinging to a reactionary and exclusionary view of citizenship. In dissent, Thomas tried to narrowly link the amendment’s purpose to formerly enslaved Black people, while Alito fear-mongered about so-called illegal entry and derided the majority’s ruling as 'medieval.'
Trump’s order, which was blocked by lower courts and never implemented, would have cruelly excluded babies born to temporary visitors or undocumented immigrants from citizenship. The American Civil Liberties Union, representing those fighting the order, hailed the decision as a reaffirmation that birth on U.S. soil confers citizenship, and that no president can trample constitutional rights by executive fiat.
The Court’s decision upholds prior precedent, including the landmark 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark case, which confirmed citizenship for a child born in San Francisco to foreign parents. Every lower court that reviewed Trump’s order had already ruled against this discriminatory policy.