The US president has pledged to challenge the ruling, but experts say birthright citizenship is there to stay.
(Al Jazeera) – 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.”
