The Latest: Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s restrictions
By The Associated Press undefined
The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
The decision, in line with the longstanding judicial interpretation of the 14th Amendment, comes on the final day of a Supreme Court term that has centered on Trump’s expansive claims of presidential power — and largely ruled in his favor.
In its other Tuesday rulings, the court upheld laws in roughly half the states that prohibit transgender girls and women from playing on their public school and college sport teams and struck down limits on party spending in federal elections.
Here’s the latest:
Venezuelan woman who is part of another birthright lawsuit received court decision in tears
“I feel a great sense of tranquility,” said the woman, one of the five plaintiffs in the lawsuit at the Maryland district court. “It is a triumph for our children; I fought hard for this day,” said the asylum seeker.
The woman, who asked not to be identified from fear of being detained, said she filed the lawsuit Jan. 21, 2025, the day after President Trump announced his executive order declaring that children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens. She was pregnant with her first child, who was born in August 2025.
As an asylum seeker, she did not believe she could request the Venezuelan citizenship for the baby and wondered what citizenship the child would have.
“There was a lot of uncertainty and fear. I wondered: if my son wasn’t going to be from here, then where would he be from?” said the woman, who was a doctor in her country and arrived to the U.S. in 2019 after receiving death threats in Venezuela.
On Tuesday, she said she felt a “sea of emotions” when she saw the news on TV.
ACLU celebrates the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling
“This should have been a unanimous decision,” attorney Cody Wofsy, deputy director at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, told reporters after the decision was announced. “The text of the Constitution is clear, the history is clear, and the precedent is clear.”
“That said, regardless of what the vote count may have been, this is a rejection of the Trump administration’s extreme attempts to rewrite the Constitution and to exclude entire portions of American-born children from our country.”
Birthright could become a powerful wedge issue in US politics, critic of decision says
“The president was never going to win, in the sense that his executive order was going to be overturned,” said Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank favoring restrictive immigration policies. “The question was if the Supreme Court would accept the ACLU’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment.”
The ruling “constitutionalized the question” of birthright citizenship, he said, requiring changes through a constitutional amendment.
That, he argued, is highly unlikely: “Congress can’t rename post offices, let alone do anything else.”
But, he said, birthright could now become a powerful political wedge issue, similar to the court’s 1973 abortion ruling, which was overturned in 2022.
“It’ll distort our politics the way Roe vs. Wade did in energizing a political movement,” he said.
Could pregnancy now be a question on visa application?
Mark Krikorian, a prominent Washington voice favoring restrictive immigration policies, said he expects the ruling to result in new U.S. visa applications, with potential visitors being asked if they are pregnant.
“It’s something that visa officers are often reluctant to ask about — it’s awkward,” said Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“But if it’s on the application then you have the answers, and if you lie you’ve committed a felony,” he said.
The Trump administration says birthright citizenship has created what it calls a birth tourism industry.
“It is unacceptable for foreign parents to use a U.S. tourist visa for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States to obtain citizenship for the child,” the State Department said in a post on X. “Those who abuse our immigration system through birth tourism may be ineligible for future visas or travel to the United States.”
Justice Thomas says the majority misunderstands the 14th amendment
He insists the majority opinion perpetuates a misunderstanding and misapplication of the 14th amendment.
The citizenship clause and related Reconstruction statutes granted citizenship “to persons born and domiciled in the United States regardless of their race,” he wrote. But “neither guaranteed citizenship to persons who were not domiciled in the United States.”
He continued: “Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans. They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority.”
That highlights the argument over what it means to be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S.
The majority holds that, with exceptions like foreign diplomats, being on U.S. soil makes a person subject to U.S. laws. Thomas and dissenters reason that no one who is separately subject to another foreign government should be considered “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., at least when conferring citizenship.
Justice Jackson takes issue with Thomas in citizenship reasoning
Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent in the birthright case argued the 14th amendment’s citizenship clause applied only to formerly enslaved people and not more broadly.
That prompted Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to pen a concurrence to Roberts’ majority opinion.
“Despite his longstanding endorsement of a ‘colorblind’ Constitution, Justice Thomas now surprisingly suggests that the Citizenship Clause was a race-conscious remedial measure, relating only to ‘freed slaves such as Dred Scott,'” she wrote, calling that a “narrow vision” of Reconstruction’s intended expansion of democracy.
“This alternative account pitches Black Americans against immigrants when the advocates who promoted the Fourteenth Amendment did no such thing,” Jackson wrote. “Freed Blacks fought for the shared humanity of all people.”
Jackson is the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court. Thomas is the second Black man, succeeding Thurgood Marshall, who argued the Brown v. Board case that struck down segregated schools.
Trump says Congress should end birthright citizenship and calls court ruling ‘too bad’
The president said the Supreme Court’s decision upholding that anyone born in the United States automatically becomes an American citizen was “too bad for our Country,” but that Congress could “easily” address it with legislation.
Trump declared that “No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!”
But the Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday makes it clear that it would be necessary to amend the Constitution. Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the opinion for the court, pointed to the Fourteenth Amendment in the Constitution in ruling that anyone born in the country, with very limited exceptions, is a citizen.
Justice Department reacts to the ruling on birthright citizenship
The Justice Department said in a statement that it’s “committed to tackling illegal birth tourism schemes by working diligently with U.S. Attorneys across the country to uphold the law.”
“Actors seeking to exploit loopholes to obtain automatic citizenship for their children pose a national security threat and will be brought to justice,” the department said in a post on X.
Dred Scott case featured in the justices’ birthright citizenship writings
U.S. Supreme Court justices have long distanced themselves from the pre-Civil War decision that declared Black people — enslaved and free — were not U.S. citizens.
The 1857 Dred Scott case was featured again Tuesday, being mentioned 48 times in 194 pages of the birthright citizenship opinion, concurrences and dissents.
Roberts’ majority opinion explained how U.S. birthright citizenship originates with English common law: Anyone born in the monarch’s realm was considered a “natural-born subject.”
The “odious” Scott case, Roberts said, deviated from that once-accepted understanding and “was met with shock.”
In response, he detailed, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause restored common law understanding, with lawmakers making clear they were explicitly rebuking the Scott decision.
Yet, Roberts wrote, “the Government and the principal dissent propose a return to its core tenet,” that “for certain people, being born on American soil will not suffice to confer citizenship.”
Supreme Court denies report that Justice Samuel Alito is retiring
The Supreme Court’s public information office is denying a published report, since retracted, that the court announced Alito’s retirement Tuesday.
The unusual statement followed a story from NPR saying the court had announced that Alito was stepping down. NPR pulled the story a short time later. Chief Justice John Roberts announced the retirement of several court employees Tuesday, as he customarily does after the court’s final opinions are out. Alito was not among them.
Speculation had swirled about the justice’s future plans earlier this year, but Fox News and CBS reported this spring that he planned to remain on the bench.
NPR’s editor-in-chief released a statement saying the story had been incorrectly reported and that correspondent Nina Totenberg would appear on “All Things Considered” Tuesday afternoon to explain what had happened.
Court will consider striking down assault weapons bans in Connecticut and the Chicago-area
A Supreme Court that has expanded gun rights will consider whether bans on semiautomatic rifles, often called assault weapons, violate the Second Amendment.
The justices said Tuesday they will take up appeals asking the court to strike down bans on the AR-15 and similar semiautomatic firearms in the Chicago area and Connecticut.
Similar laws are in place in about a dozen states, covering major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Congress allowed a national assault weapons ban to expire in 2004, but Democrats have supported renewing it in response to a series of mass shootings and states have continued to pass their own laws.
The cases are the latest high-profile disputes over guns to reach the court since its conservative majority handed down a landmark ruling in 2022 that expanded Second Amendment rights and spawned challenges to firearm laws around the country.
The case is expected to be heard in the fall.