{"id":5787,"date":"2026-06-30T15:37:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T15:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=5787"},"modified":"2026-06-30T15:37:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T15:37:29","slug":"supreme-court-upholds-principle-that-almost-all-born-on-u-s-soil-are-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=5787","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court upholds principle that almost all born on U.S. soil are American"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the court had struck down birthright citizenship and upheld President Donald Trump\u2019s executive order, the ruling would have had sweeping political, economic and social ramifications.<\/strong><\/p>

Read more Supreme Court sides with GOP, loosens campaign spending rules<\/a><\/p>\n

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Olga Urbina holds her son, Ares, as people gathered outside the Supreme Court in May 2025. The court heard arguments about lower courts’ ability to block President Donald Trump\u2019s policy to end birthright citizenship. (Matt McClain\/The Washington Post)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

The Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed the principle that almost everyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen, a major decision that rejects a push by President Donald Trump to fundamentally redefine who is American in ways not seen for more than 150 years.<\/p>\n

The justices struck down an executive order by the president that said citizenship would not be granted to children born to parents who are in the country illegally or those on temporary visas for work, travel, school or humanitarian reasons.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s order would have had sweeping political, economic and social ramifications, changing the definition of citizenship in the most significant way since the 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to formerly enslaved people was ratified shortly after the Civil War.<\/p>\n

The ruling reaffirms the long-settled understanding that the 14th Amendment automatically confers citizenship on any child born in the United States, with limited exceptions for children of diplomats and other rare cases. The principle was established in a landmark 1898 high court decision that found that Wong Kim Ark<\/a>, a man born to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, was a citizen.<\/p>\n

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority for the ideologically mixed group of justices that included the court\u2019s three liberals, as well as conservatives Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh, who joined in part and dissented in part.<\/p>\n

\u201cCitizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights \u2014 to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to \u2018every free-born person in this land,\u2019\u201d Roberts wrote. \u201cWe keep that promise today.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A poster shows a picture of Wong Kim Ark at his great-grandson’s home in California. In 1898, Wong Kim Ark challenged the U.S. government after being denied re-entry to the country following a trip to his parents’ homeland. (Carlos Barria\/Reuters)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

The opinion came over the objections of conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Thomas wrote for the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support,\u201d Thomas wrote in his dissenting opinion.<\/p>\n

Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices during arguments<\/a> in April that granting birthright citizenship to nearly everyone creates a magnet for illegal immigration and \u201cbirth tourism\u201d \u2014 traveling to the U.S. to have a baby so the child can be a U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n

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A courtroom sketch depicts Solicitor General D. John Sauer making arguments before the Supreme Court on April 1 with President Donald Trump seated behind him. (Dana Verkouteren\/AP)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

He also said migrants who take advantage of the United States\u2019 citizenship policy undermine the rule of law.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a new world now \u2026 where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who\u2019s a U.S. citizen,\u201d Sauer said.<\/p>

Read more Supreme Court upholds bans on transgender women in female athletics<\/a><\/p>\n

Sauer\u2019s legal argument<\/a> turned on a clause in the 14th Amendment, which states: \u201cAll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof\u201d are citizens.<\/p>\n

Sauer said \u201csubject to the jurisdiction thereof\u201d invokes a necessary political allegiance to the United States to be a citizen. He said children whose parents lack permanent residency status cannot demonstrate that fealty because they haven\u2019t committed to staying in the country for the long term.<\/p>\n

Cecillia Wang, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union<\/a>, which sued to block Trump\u2019s order, rejected that argument, saying the phrase has long been understood to refer to the children of diplomats and others.<\/p>\n

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ACLU National Legal Director Cecillia Wang, center, and ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, right, outside the Supreme Court building on April 1. (Heather Diehl\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

She told the justices in April that the administration\u2019s reading of the 14th Amendment belied its plain meaning, the court\u2019s holding in United States v. Wong Kim Ark<\/i> and decades of practice by the government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe framers of the 14th Amendment meant to have universal law of citizenship subject to narrow exceptions,\u201d Wang said.<\/p>\n

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A portrait of American Wong Kim Ark in 1904. (Interim Archives\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

As one of the first acts of his second term, Trump issued an executive order in January instructing government agencies to stop issuing citizenship documentation to children born to families without permanent immigration status on or after Feb. 19, 2025.<\/p>\n

The administration quickly faced multiple lawsuits over the controversial order.<\/p>\n

One of the cases made it to the Supreme Court last year. That case did not deal with the merits of Trump\u2019s birthright citizenship order, but instead examined whether lower federal courts could issue nationwide injunctions. The justices ruled for the Trump administration<\/a>, limiting the orders that have tied up some of his agenda.<\/p>\n

After that decision, the ACLU and other immigrants\u2019 rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit in New Hampshire on behalf of families affected by the order. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in the case, but before an appeals court ruled, administration officials petitioned the Supreme Court to take it up.<\/p>\n

About 250,000 children would have been born without citizenship in the U.S. each year under Trump\u2019s order, or roughly 5 million by 2045, according to a friend-of-the-court brief<\/a> filed by dozens of professors. Some would probably have been left stateless because their parents would be unwilling or unable to obtain citizenship for their children in their homelands.<\/p>\n

The professors argued that Trump\u2019s order would create a permanent underclass.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe creation of this caste would disrupt 150 years of intergenerational upward mobility for immigrants and would reverberate broadly through the U.S. economy and society while failing to address actual causes of migration,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

The U.S. is one of about 35 countries that have birthright citizenship. Most nations abide by lineage-based rules that mandate parents be citizens or permanent residents for their children to obtain citizenship.<\/p>

Read more Absent congressman returns to Congress after nearly four months<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the court had struck down birthright citizenship and upheld President Donald Trump\u2019s executive order, the ruling would have had sweeping political, economic and social ramifications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nSupreme Court upholds principle that almost all born on U.S. soil are American - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=5787\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Supreme Court upholds principle that almost all born on U.S. soil are American - 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