Birthright citizenship remains constitutionally protected after the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday, 30 June 2026, ruled 6-3 against President Donald Trump’s order to deny it to some children born on American soil.
The decision, as reported by The Washington Post, strikes down the executive order Trump signed on the first day of his second term.
It sought to bar citizenship for babies born to parents in the country illegally or living there on temporary visas.
What the birthright citizenship ruling decided
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 6-3 majority opinion, holding that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
Every lower court that reviewed the order had already blocked it before now.
The vote split the bench six to three, with the conservative majority not moving as a single bloc. The outcome denies the administration one of the signature immigration measures of Trump’s second term and affirms a reading of the Fourteenth Amendment that has stood for well over a century.
Roberts traced the principle to the colonists’ demand for the “rights of Englishmen” and to abolitionists who praised the “ancient and universal” rule of citizenship by birth alone.
His reasoning grounded the result in constitutional history rather than the present political dispute over immigration.
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, was written to guarantee citizenship to formerly enslaved people.
Its Citizenship Clause has since been read to cover almost everyone born on United States territory, a standard the government tried to narrow for the first time in modern history.
Why the birthright citizenship case reached the court
The order, signed in January 2025, never took effect because judges across the country halted it. The question that reached the justices was whether the Constitution guarantees citizenship to children of parents who are in the country unlawfully or only on a temporary basis.
For families affected, the ruling removes the threat that a newborn’s status could depend on a parent’s immigration position.
Hospitals, state agencies and passport offices can keep issuing documents on the settled understanding that birth on American soil confers citizenship automatically.
The ruling matters well beyond America. Citizenship by birth, known as jus soli, shapes migration debate globally, including in countries such as South Africa where nationality follows different rules tied to parentage and residence rather than place of birth.
With the constitutional question settled, the administration cannot revive the order through fresh litigation on the same grounds.
Attention now turns to whether the White House seeks other legislative routes to change nationality rules, a path that would run through Congress rather than the courts.
