{"id":283287,"date":"2026-07-01T05:24:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T05:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/283287\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T05:24:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T05:24:50","slug":"supreme-court-strikes-down-trump-birthright-citizenship-order-in-blow-to-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/283287\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court strikes down Trump birthright citizenship order in blow to president"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0The Supreme Court smacked down President Trump\u2019s executive order<\/a> denying birthright citizenship<\/a> to children of illegal immigrants and tourists Tuesday, quashing a marquee policy of his for the second time in under five months.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s day one order had been in limbo amid a legal battle<\/a> over whether it violated the 14th Amendment<\/a>, which states: \u201cAll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court ruled 5-4\u00a0that even those \u201cborn in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present\u201d are covered by the equal protection amendment, meaning a change to the Constitution would be required\u00a0to change\u00a0their status \u2014\u00a0the worst-case scenario for the White House.\u00a0<\/p>\n

President Trump signed the executive order on birthright citizenship during his first day back in office. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

A sixth justice, Brett Kavanaugh, found that the order\u00a0did not violate the 14th Amendment, but did violate federal law\u00a0from the 1940s and 1950s\u00a0\u2014 and a change in the status of children born to foreigners could be brought about by Congress alone.<\/p>\n

Trump and his allies seized on the Kavanaugh rationale to\u00a0attempt a long-shot fix in Congress,\u00a0rather than by way of constitutional amendment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Follow The Post\u2019s live coverage of President Trump and national politics for the latest news and analysis<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe [Supreme Court] majority tried to constitutionalize unlimited birthright citizenship. But Justice Kavanaugh MAY have left Congress\u00a0a door,\u201d\u00a0Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) wrote on X.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m filing legislation to walk through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump sarcastically said the birthright citizenship ruling was a gift to China, as the\u00a0New York Post previously reported\u00a0<\/a>how often pregnant Chinese women were taking advantage of the birth tourism loophole.\u00a0Trump had long warned that birthright citizenship was driving up illegal border crossings and pledged to end it as part of his broader immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process,\u201d Trump wrote on\u00a0Truth Social<\/a>. \u201cNo long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!\u201d<\/p>\n

However, writing for the majority,\u00a0Chief Justice John Roberts rejected this \u201cdramatically revisionist view\u201d of the 14th Amendment and was\u00a0joined in the majority by fellow conservative Amy Coney Barrett and liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor \u2014 a rare combination on the divided court.<\/p>\n

\u201cCitizenship, then and now,\u201d Roberts concluded, \u201cwas the right to have rights\u2014to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to \u2018every free-born person in this land.\u2019 We keep that promise today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maria, eight months pregnant, and David Quero, migrants from Venezuela, leaving the Row Hotel in NYC after being evicted in 2024. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n

The opinion didn\u2019t\u00a0appear to explicitly preclude legislation from Congress to adjust birthright citizenship, but its constitutional finding makes it unlikely to hold up.\u00a0\u00a0Multiple legal experts have warned that Congress can\u2019t end the policy on its own and that an amendment would be needed following Tuesday\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

Conservative justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas dissented, with Alito arguing in a blistering opinion that\u00a0the 14th Amendment \u201cconfers citizenship\u00a0on only\u00a0those children who, at birth, owe allegiance\u00a0solely to this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the most important decisions in the history\u00a0of the Court, and in my judgment, the Court has made a\u00a0serious mistake,\u201d he fumed. \u201c\u2026The\u00a0Fourteenth Amendment dictates who must be a citizen, but\u00a0it does not address who\u00a0may be\u00a0a citizen by Act of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court\u2019s interpretation saddles this country with an\u00a0ancient British rule that even the United Kingdom has\u00a0abandoned, as\u00a0have other countries whose legal systems\u00a0share the same pedigree,\u201d he went on. \u201cThe Court\u2019s interpretation preserves a powerful incentive\u00a0to enter or remain in this country illegally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court opted to hear a slew of cases revolving around President Trump this term. Aristide Economopoulos<\/p>\n

Thomas was similarly scathing, writing that \u201cthe Court has repurposed the Fourteenth Amendment to protect its own set of preferred rights that the Reconstruction Congress never contemplated and that cannot find support in its text. Today, the Court does so again by recognizing a constitutional right to citizenship for the children of all foreign birth tourists and illegal aliens.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not sure that today\u2019s opinion will stand the test of time,\u201d Thomas added. \u201cThe Citizenship Clause \u2018added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship.\u2019 Today\u2019s opinion devalues that citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 250,000 babies born in the US each year would have been affected by the executive order, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University\u2019s Population Research Institute.<\/p>\n

Trump became the first-ever sitting president to attend Supreme Court oral arguments\u00a0when the justices heard the\u00a0case\u00a0April 1<\/a>, underscoring the\u00a0high stakes.<\/p>\n

A pregnant immigrant from Haiti is assisted by her partner (left, center) and another immigrant while having contractions after she crossed from Mexico in 2022. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The administration had not been expected to prevail, with\u00a0many\u00a0experts expressing skepticism that Trump could unilaterally restrict the definition of birthright citizenship via executive order.<\/p>\n

In February, Trump was dealt a similar blow when the Supreme Court ruled that he\u00a0couldn\u2019t use the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA)<\/a>\u00a0to impose customized tariffs on foreign countries at will.<\/p>\n

The simplest way to add a constitutional amendment altering the definition of birthright citizenship is to have it approved by a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate along with 38 of the 50 state legislatures \u2014 a near-impossibility given ongoing political polarization.<\/p>\n

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A key precedent in the birthright case was the 1898 US v. Wong Kim Ark ruling, which dealt with a dispute over the status of a man born to Chinese immigrants who were in America legally but barred from being US citizens due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the Supreme Court sided with Wong and ruled that almost all native born children in the US automatically become citizens unless they are the offspring of occupying hostile forces, foreign rulers or diplomats, or born on foreign ships in US ports.<\/p>\n

During oral arguments, Solicitor General John Sauer pointed out that the Wong Kim Ark case dealt with a child of legal, domiciled immigrants rather than illegal aliens.<\/p>\n

Roberts rejected the idea of any difference between the two, writing that \u201cthe Court exhaustively canvassed the text and history of the Citizenship Clause.<\/p>\n

President Trump predicted the Supreme Court would rule against him in the birthright citizenship case. ZUMAPRESS.com<\/p>\n

\u201cIt traced an unbroken line from the English common law, into the founding and antebellum eras, and through the debates, to the Clause\u2019s ratification,\u201d he added. \u201cYet at no point did the Court identify any evidence in the historical record that the ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment thought themselves to be imposing a domicile limitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case decided Thursday, Trump v. Barbara, stems from a challenge by three people left in limbo by the order.<\/p>\n

Barbara is a Honduran asylum applicant who gave birth in October of last year. Susan is a Taiwanese citizen in the US on a student visa whose daughter was born in April 2025. The baby\u2019s US passport application was in progress at the time of the suit. The third is Mark, a Brazilian applicant for permanent residency whose son was born in March 2025 and initially received a US passport.<\/p>\n

All three filed suit under pseudonyms, alleging that the order unlawfully stripped their children of US citizenship and its attendant benefits, including Social Security, Medicaid, and food stamps.<\/p>\n

A New Hampshire federal judge issued a preliminary injunction and certified the plaintiffs\u2019 children and others in a similar position as a nationwide class.<\/p>\n

\u201cCitizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights\u2014to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to \u2018every free-born person in this land,’\u201d Roberts concluded his opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep that promise today.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Post wires
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