July 01,2026: 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.”
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”.
