Supreme Court ruling ensures citizenship for every child born in the US
In a 6-3 decision Tuesday, the high court said there was no reason to depart from the 1898 decision that codified the right into law.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship, ensuring that every child born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ legal status, is a citizen and handing a victory to immigrant families and civil rights advocates.
In a 6-3 decision Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no reason to depart from the 1898 decision that codified the right into law. In the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the court recognized that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution grants citizenship by birth to those born on U.S. soil, including children born to foreign parents.
Justice John Roberts, who wrote the decision, said that since the 19th-century case, “We have repeatedly understood the rule of Wong Kim Ark to guarantee citizenship to all children born in the United States and subject to its power.”
“We see no reason to depart from that view today,” he wrote.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Jackson joined Roberts in the decision.
The decision marks one of the few times that the Supreme Court has rebuked the president. Three conservative justices — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — dissented.
“I don’t think anyone with a knowledge of this subject is surprised,” said Rachel Rosenbloom, professor at Northeastern University School of Law. “This is one of the easiest cases the Supreme Court has ever been called on to decide. “
She added that “in every generation since the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, there have been fringe theories floating around that certain groups of children are not birthright citizens. All of the previous theories failed in the courts, and now this one has failed, too,” she said.
The ruling in Trump v. Barbara was long-awaited. The case is the result of a class action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a civil rights advocacy organization, challenging an executive order by Trump directing federal departments not to recognize the children born to undocumented immigrants or temporary visa holders.
Northeastern Global News, in your inbox.
Sign up for NGN’s daily newsletter for news, discovery and analysis from around the world.
Recent legal developments
Trump’s directive, issued on Jan. 20, 2025, was swiftly challenged, resulting in multiple universal injunctions halting the action. The administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene, and on June 27, 2025, it struck down the courts’ use of the injunction without directly addressing the legal questions about birthright citizenship.
The day the Supreme Court issued that ruling, the ACLU filed a new class action lawsuit in federal court in New Hampshire on behalf of children who would be affected by the administration’s executive order. On July 10, 2025, a district court judge allowed the class action to proceed and again blocked the executive order from taking effect, which the administration challenged in September 2025 in a petition to the high court. In December 2025, the justices agreed to hear the case.
Legal history
The legal debate surrounding birthright citizenship dates back to Reconstruction, when the nation grappled with questions about who qualified as a U.S. citizen following the emancipation of slaves that led to the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868. The 14th Amendment was a response to a notorious Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which stated that Americans descended from African slaves could not become citizens.
The amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” and shall have the full rights and privileges afforded as such.
Since the adoption of the 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship, which is codified in the Citizenship Clause, has periodically faced scrutiny from opponents through legislation and legal challenges, Rosenbloom said.
“There are many people who chafe against that fact and have been trying to dislodge it for many years,” Rosenbloom said. “But the law has absolutely been settled on this question since at least the 1880s — and arguably much longer than that.”
In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court held that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents was a U.S. citizen under the Citizenship Clause. Then, in 1940, Congress passed a law that consolidated the nation’s scattered nationality laws, in so doing enshrining the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, Rosenbloom said.
“What really matters is what Congress understood that language to mean in 1940,” Rosenbloom said, adding that the legislative history “makes quite clear” Congress intended the Nationality Act of 1940 to include the children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visitors.
Editor’s Picks
The Trump administration argued that the decision in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark does not guarantee birthright citizenship to every child born on U.S. soil because it turns on the fact that Wong’s parents were lawfully domiciled in the United States. It argued that the Citizenship Clause was intended to extend citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their descendants — not the children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors.
Tiffany Joseph, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Northeastern, said that she is surprised but relieved that the court rebuked Trump on this topic, given other decisions that the court has made on immigrant issues.
The court recently allowed the Trump administration to remove temporary protective status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, making them unable to legally work in the U.S. and subject to deportation.
“So this is a pretty substantial decision,” she said. “Hopefully, we can say the issues are resolved for the foreseeable future.”
In a 91-page dissent, Justice Thomas wrote the court’s decision marks an “extraordinary step,” and only “adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment,” which he said was designed to secure equal rights for freed Black slaves but has been repurposed for political ends.
President Trump weighed in on the ruling on the social media platform Truth Social, saying that the court’s action was “too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation.”
However, Rosenbloom said that if Congress passed a law outlawing birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court would strike it down, based on the ruling it just made.
