US Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship: Who wins, who loses?

The US Supreme Court has struck down President Donald Trump’s attempt to end the longstanding practice of granting citizenship to anyone born on United States soil, delivering a major blow to his attempts to overhaul immigration policy.

In a 6-3 ruling on Tuesday, the court rejected an executive order signed by Trump shortly after taking office in January 2025, which barred those born in the US to parents on temporary legal statuses or without documentation from automatically receiving US citizenship.

Ahead of the July 4 holiday marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, the court’s ruling reaffirmed what it means to be a US citizen, however – a principle grounded in the 14th Amendment of 1868 in the aftermath of the civil war, which ended the practice of slavery in the US.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, hailed the US practice of birthright citizenship. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land’,” he wrote. “We keep that promise today.”

What was Trump’s case?

In line with his hardline anti-immigration agenda, Trump’s executive order stated that if one’s parent is “unlawfully present in the United States” and the other is not a citizen or a “lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth”, the child cannot claim birthright.

It added that if a parent’s presence in the country is “lawful but temporary” through a tourist, student or work visa and the other parent is not a US citizen, birthright citizenship cannot be passed on to the child.

Birthright citizenship grants automatic US citizenship to babies born in the country, no matter their parents’ status, drawing on the English common law principle of “jus soli”, or “right of the soil”. This is opposed to the “jus sanguinis”, or “right of blood”, which stipulates that the nationality of a child is determined by that of the parents, regardless of the location of birth.

Trump repeatedly argued that birthright citizenship “ripped off” taxpayers by allowing undocumented migrants to take advantage of the US welfare state. Lawyers for the administration argued in court that the practice had been based on a “misreading” of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which states that “all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”.

US Solicitor General John Sauer, representing the administration, argued that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” automatically precluded some immigrant groups from birthright citizenship, and that it should apply only to those with “allegiance to the United States by virtue of domicile”.

Sauer also argued that granting citizenship to any baby born on US soil had led to what he termed “birth tourism”, or the arrival of “uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations” who aimed to secure citizenship for their children.