US Supreme Court rules against Trump order to end birthright citizenship
Key takeaways
- The 6-3 ruling represents a major blow to Trump and his effort to transform immigration in the US.
- The nine-panel Supreme Court’s ruling upholds a lower court’s determination that Trump’s order ran counter to the US constitution, as well as a subsequent Supreme Court decision on the matter.
- In his opinion, he said Trump administration lawyers and dissenting Supreme Court justices had offered insufficient evidence in its reinterpretation of longstanding law.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
The 6-3 ruling represents a major blow to Trump and his effort to transform immigration in the US. Upon taking office on January 20, 2025, Trump had signed an executive order seeking to bar those born in the US to parents on temporary legal statuses or without documentation from automatically receiving US citizenship.
The nine-panel Supreme Court’s ruling upholds a lower court’s determination that Trump’s order ran counter to the US constitution, as well as a subsequent Supreme Court decision on the matter.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts traced the US practice of birthright citizenship to English common law, through the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 and the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in the United States v Wong Kim Ark.