Five of the justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, agreed that Trump’s order violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately that he believed the order violated federal law.
On Truth Social, Trump said the court’s decision was “terrible” and vowed to continue fighting to end birthright citizenship.
“There is no need to amend the constitution for a long and difficult time,” he said. “Congress must today begin the work of ending the costly, and inappropriate for our country, birthright citizenship.”
The US has granted citizenship to everyone born in this country since 1868, a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, and strengthened by recent US Supreme Court decisions.
Passed after the US civil war, the 14th Amendment – which was intended for newly freed slaves – read that “all persons born or natural born, and under their own power, are citizens of the United States”
“Citizenship, then and now, was a right to have rights — to participate freely in our political community,” Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘all free men in this country,'” he wrote.
“We keep that promise today,” said the Chief Justice.
The Trump administration argues that its “authority” stated in the 14th Amendment should exclude the children of permanent non-residents.
Three of the court’s nine justices dissented: Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito.
Justice Thomas argued that the 14th amendment had been “repurposed for political projects” and that freed slaves were originally intended to be “Americans” without foreign allegiance.
One of the dissenting Justices, Samuel Alito, described this decision as a “big mistake” that grants citizenship to almost anyone born in this country, including those who come to the US with the intention of giving birth to a child and then return to their country.
The case was especially important to President Donald Trump, who made a brief but historic appearance in court to watch oral arguments in April.
At X, White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — a vocal proponent of tougher immigration laws — called it “one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions” in Supreme Court history.
“Being an American citizen is not a birthright,” he said. “There is no section of the Constitution that can be read to require national self-destruction.”
But immigration advocates and administration critics cheered the decision.
Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the Democrats in the US House of Representatives, said that by using the law and being guided by the Constitution, the Supreme Court “finally confirmed that all people born in the United States are American citizens”.
“There is, and there will be, no question,” Jeffries said.
Dariely Rodriguez, senior counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights Under the Law, said the decision “reinforces what we have known to be true for over a century”.
“Anyone born on American soil, regardless of where their parents are legally, is born an American citizen,” he added. We have endured an incredible test of our will as a nation and we have succeeded. ”
