The Ruling

In a 6-3 decision issued Tuesday, June 30, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, reaffirming the long-standing constitutional guarantee that nearly all people born on U.S. soil are American citizens.

The case, Trump v. Barbara, challenged Executive Order 14160 — signed on President Trump's first day in office in January 2025 as part of his broader immigration crackdown. The order sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who were either undocumented or present only temporarily, such as individuals on work or student visas.

The Vote

What the Court Said

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts grounded the decision in the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause, holding that children born in the U.S. to parents who are undocumented or only temporarily present are still "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States — and are therefore citizens at birth.

The opinion leaned heavily on the Court's 1898 precedent, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which the majority read as having settled this question over a century ago: citizenship by birth extends to nearly everyone born within U.S. territory, with only a handful of narrow historical exceptions — children of accredited foreign diplomats, children born to hostile occupying forces, and births aboard foreign sovereign vessels.

Roberts also invoked the amendment's framers directly, writing that citizenship "was the right to have rights" and that the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to "every free-born person in this land."