The United States Supreme Court has struck down President Donald Trump’s Executive Order seeking to limit birthright citizenship, affirming that children born on American soil remain entitled to automatic US citizenship under the Constitution.
In a 6-3 ruling delivered on Tuesday, the court upheld a 150-year-old legal precedent that grants citizenship to individuals born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
The decision marks a major setback for Trump, who has long campaigned against birthright citizenship and made its abolition a key component of his immigration agenda.
Trump had signed the executive order shortly after returning to the White House, seeking to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the US to parents who are in the country illegally or are on temporary visas.
Opponents of the policy argued that the order violated the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that persons “born or naturalised” in the United States are citizens.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said children born to parents residing in the US unlawfully or temporarily are “citizens at birth” under the Constitution.
Roberts cited the historical origins of the 14th Amendment, which was adopted after the American Civil War to settle questions surrounding the citizenship of formerly enslaved people born in the United States.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights – to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,’” Roberts wrote.
“We keep that promise today.”
The ruling preserves a longstanding constitutional interpretation that has been in place for more than a century and a half and reinforces the principle of birthright citizenship in one of about 30 countries worldwide that grant automatic citizenship to anyone born within their borders.
Legal observers noted that although Trump’s legal team succeeded in bringing a once-fringe constitutional argument before the nation’s highest court, a majority of the justices declined to overturn longstanding precedent or reinterpret the Constitution to support the president’s position.
The decision is expected to trigger a strong reaction from Trump, who has repeatedly criticised birthright citizenship.
During his 2015 presidential campaign, Trump described the policy as “the biggest magnet for illegal immigration” and has consistently argued that it encourages unlawful migration into the United States.
Only weeks before the ruling, Trump reiterated his opposition on his social media platform, saying the US “cannot live with the shackles” of birthright citizenship.
“It is not economically, or otherwise, sustainable and no other country in the world, of consequence, does it,” he wrote.
The Supreme Court’s ruling effectively blocks the implementation of the executive order and reaffirms constitutional protections for children born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
