---
title: "US Supreme Court strikes down Trump order ending birthright citizenship"
description: "The US Supreme Court has struck down President Trump's executive order seeking to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the country to undocumented or temporary immigrants, ruling 6-3 that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said the Court was breaking 'no new ground.'"
category: "Politics"
category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/politics
author: "Sofia Russo"
published: 2026-07-02T09:30:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-02T09:30:00.000Z
canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/us-supreme-court-strikes-down-trump-order-ending-birthright-citizenship
tags: ["supreme-court", "birthright-citizenship", "united-states", "immigration", "donald-trump"]
---
# US Supreme Court strikes down Trump order ending birthright citizenship

The US Supreme Court has struck down President Trump's executive order seeking to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the country to undocumented or temporary immigrants, ruling 6-3 that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said the Court was breaking 'no new ground.'

The US Supreme Court has rejected one of President Trump's central immigration initiatives, ruling that the Constitution guarantees citizenship to nearly all children born on American soil and striking down his attempt to end that guarantee by executive order.

## The ruling

In *Trump v. Barbara*, decided on June 30, the Court invalidated an order Trump signed on his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, which had directed the federal government to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who were in the country unlawfully or on temporary visas, [NPR reported](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5839358/birthright-citizenship-decision-scotus-trump).

The decision was 6-3. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the Court's three liberals, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the outcome but wrote separately. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

## "We break no new ground"

Roberts framed the decision as an affirmation of long-settled law rather than a new departure. "We break no new ground," he wrote, [according to SCOTUSblog](https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/birthright-citizenship-we-break-no-new-ground-today/). The majority grounded birthright citizenship in the text of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause, in English common-law tradition, and in the Reconstruction-era history that produced the amendment after the Civil War.

Central to the ruling was *United States v. Wong Kim Ark*, an 1898 decision that established that a child born in the United States is a citizen regardless of the parents' immigration status. The majority concluded that children born in the country to undocumented or temporarily present parents are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States — the key phrase in the Citizenship Clause — and are therefore citizens at birth.

## The dissents

The dissenting justices argued that the majority had misread the amendment's history and scope. In the lead dissent, Justice Thomas contended that the Citizenship Clause was written narrowly, chiefly to secure citizenship for formerly enslaved people, and did not automatically extend to the children of immigrants without lawful status. Justice Alito, in a separate dissent, called the ruling a serious mistake, arguing that citizenship should turn on a fuller allegiance to the United States than temporary or unlawful presence implies.

## What it means

The judgment forecloses the administration's effort to restrict birthright citizenship through executive action, and lower courts had already blocked the order from taking effect while the case proceeded. The practical result is that the roughly 160-year-old understanding of who is a citizen at birth remains in place.

The Court did leave one question open. Its opinion addressed only the executive order, not whether Congress could change the rules by legislation — a distinct and far harder constitutional question that the majority did not decide. Some analysts noted that, while the administration lost decisively on the order itself, the ruling does not resolve every future avenue for revisiting the issue.

For now, the decision settles a fight that has run since the first day of Trump's second term, reaffirming a principle that has governed American citizenship for well over a century.

## Sources

- [Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship on constitutional grounds](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5839358/birthright-citizenship-decision-scotus-trump)
- [Birthright citizenship: 'We break no new ground today'](https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/birthright-citizenship-we-break-no-new-ground-today/)
- [Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, blocks Trump order](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/30/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-ruling.html)