Donald Trump suffered another major defeat at the Supreme Court on Tuesday after the justices rejected his attempt to strip automatic U.S. citizenship from babies born on American soil to many immigrant parents, a sweeping effort the court said has little basis in the Constitution.
In a 6-3 decision, the nation’s highest court ruled that Trump’s executive order trying to redefine the 14th Amendment simply doesn’t square with more than a century of constitutional law. Even two of Trump’s own appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices in rejecting the administration’s argument.
At the heart of the case was Trump’s attempt to use executive power to rewrite one of the Constitution’s clearest guarantees.
The 14th Amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” For well over 100 years, courts have interpreted that language to mean that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is automatically an American citizen.
Trump tried to change that with the stroke of a pen. His executive order declared that children born in the United States would no longer receive citizenship if their mother was in the country unlawfully or on a temporary legal status and if their father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
The Supreme Court wasn’t having it.
Writing for the majority, Roberts said there is “scant evidence” supporting what he called the Trump administration’s “dramatically revisionist view” of the 14th Amendment.
“If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design,” Roberts wrote.
He also pointed out something difficult to ignore: the words Trump’s order relied on—”mother,” “father,” “lawful,” and “temporary”—don’t appear anywhere in the Constitution’s Citizenship Clause.
“For a simple reason,” Roberts wrote. “They did not matter.”
Roberts emphasized that birthright citizenship has long been understood as one of America’s most fundamental constitutional guarantees, calling citizenship “the right to have rights.”
The court’s majority concluded that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are still “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are therefore citizens at birth.
Only Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that Trump’s executive order conflicts with existing federal law but suggested Congress—not the president—would have to change the law if lawmakers wanted a different policy.
The ruling marks another setback for Trump’s repeated efforts to govern through executive orders rather than legislation. Over the past year, multiple courts have blocked several of his administration’s most aggressive attempts to reshape immigration policy, with judges finding that presidential power has constitutional limits.
During oral arguments in April, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that modern illegal immigration justified a different interpretation of the Constitution than previous generations had adopted.
Chief Justice Roberts quickly dismissed that reasoning.
“It’s a new world,” Sauer argued.
“But it’s the same Constitution,” Roberts replied.
Civil rights groups hailed Tuesday’s decision as a decisive reaffirmation of one of the country’s oldest constitutional protections.
“The Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship stands strong,” ACLU National Legal Director Cecillia Wang said after the ruling. “A president cannot change the Constitution by executive fiat.”
The decision also preserves the Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 ruling in *United States v. Wong Kim Ark*, which established that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to virtually everyone born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
That precedent survived another challenge—and so did a constitutional promise that has defined American citizenship for more than a century.
For Trump, the ruling is more than just another courtroom loss. It’s a reminder that even a president cannot rewrite the Constitution with an executive order. On one of his administration’s signature immigration proposals, the Supreme Court made that point unmistakably clear.
