US Supreme Court Backs Birthright Citizenship in Trump v. Barbara

1st Jul 2026
The US Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Barbara that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment, striking down President Donald Trump's attempt to narrow birthright citizenship through Executive Order 14160. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, affirming a judgment from the US District Court for the District of New Hampshire and drawing on the Court's 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark v. United States, which established that children born on US soil to non-citizen parents acquire citizenship regardless of parental status. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred separately, grounding his objection to the executive order in federal statute rather than constitutional text alone. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented, with Alito describing the majority's reasoning as a serious mistake that extends citizenship to children of parents with no lasting connection to the country. Executive Order 14160, signed on Trump's first day back in the White House in January 2025, instructed federal agencies to withhold citizenship documentation from children born to mothers who were unlawfully present, or lawfully but temporarily present, where the father held neither citizenship nor lawful permanent residency. The Migration Policy Institute had estimated that roughly 255,000 children born each year to non-citizen parents stood to lose recognised citizenship status had the order taken effect. Cecillia Wang of the American Civil Liberties Union argued the case on behalf of the plaintiff class and welcomed the outcome as confirmation of a right relied upon for a century and a half. The ruling removes, for now, the prospect of federal agencies conducting parental-status determinations before issuing passports, Social Security numbers or other citizenship-dependent documents - a process that firms advising corporate clients on workforce mobility and family-based petitions had been preparing to contest case by case. Institutions handling large volumes of birth-related documentation, including hospitals, insurers and benefits administrators, can treat existing verification procedures as settled for the time being rather than pending an operational overhaul. Trump has already signalled he intends to pursue the same policy outcome through Congress rather than a constitutional amendment, a route Stephen Miller and other administration officials are likely to press quickly given the narrowness of the Court's political, if not legal, margin. Attention now turns from the courts to Congress, where any statutory attempt to redefine citizenship will face a different test than the constitutional one applied in Trump v. Barbara. Litigators who built arguments around Wong Kim Ark have a second front to track: the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which independently codifies the same right the Court has just reaffirmed on constitutional grounds.