The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship Tuesday, ruling that children born in the United States to parents who lack legal status or have temporary permission to be in the country are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court affirmed a ruling that blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order No. 14160, which sought to deny citizenship to some children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined it. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment and dissented in part. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
The case centered on the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War. It says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens of the United States and the state where they live.
Trump issued the order Jan. 20, 2025. It said children born in the United States are not citizens if their mother was in the country without legal status and their father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. It also applied when the mother was in the country under temporary legal status and the father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Parents challenged the order, some on behalf of their children. A district court in New Hampshire certified a nationwide class of children who would have been denied citizenship by the order and blocked enforcement while the case moved forward. The Supreme Court took the case before the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision.
Roberts wrote that the Citizenship Clause covers children born on U.S. soil who are subject to U.S. law. The court said that includes children born to parents who lack legal status or are in the country for a temporary stay.
“A child born on American soil and subject to American law was made an American citizen,” Roberts wrote.
The court said its decision was rooted in English common law, the history of the United States and the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment. Roberts wrote that the amendment was designed to reject Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 Supreme Court decision that denied citizenship to people descended from slaves.
The opinion also relied on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 case involving a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents. The court said that case confirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment protects citizenship by birth for people born in the United States.
The government argued that children of parents who were not domiciled in the United States were not subject to U.S. jurisdiction for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court rejected that argument, saying jurisdiction refers to the power of the United States to govern people within its territory.
Roberts wrote that words used in Trump’s order, including “mother,” “father,” “lawful” and “temporary,” do not appear in the Citizenship Clause.
The ruling also applies to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which uses the same language as the Fourteenth Amendment for citizenship at birth.
