The Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider the legality of President Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, the longstanding constitutional principle that guarantees citizenship to all children born in the United States.
The case, Trump v. Barbara, centers around an executive order signed by Trump in 2025, on the first day of his second term. In that order, the president attempted to establish, for the first time, a category of children who will not automatically become citizens if they’re born within U.S. borders. Trump’s argument that citizenship rights are only available to certain people born in America runs directly counter to the way courts have interpreted birthright citizenship since it was established more than 150 years ago.
Almost immediately after it was signed, a series of lawsuits were filed challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s order. The policy was quickly blocked by lower courts and has been put on hold while the case made its way to the Supreme Court.
Here’s what you need to know about birthright citizenship, how Trump is trying to change it and what it will mean if the nation’s top court rules in his favor.
What is birthright citizenship?
Birthright citizenship is a policy that grants U.S. citizenship to anyone who is born inside the United States, regardless of their background or the immigration status of their parents.
Why was birthright citizenship created?
In the aftermath of the Civil War, there was intense disagreement over the legal status of freed slaves living in the U.S. In its infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court ruled that Black people of African descent could not become citizens. Congress passed and ratified the 14th Amendment in 1868 in part to overturn that decision and grant citizenship to anyone born in the U.S.
How is Trump trying to change birthright citizenship?
Trump’s order wouldn’t eliminate birthright citizenship entirely, but it would create a group of children who do not automatically become citizens when they’re born in the U.S. Under the terms of the order, a baby’s citizenship would be decided by the legal status of its parents. Children born to mothers who are in the country illegally or who are legally present on a temporary visa would not be granted citizenship unless their father is a citizen or legal permanent resident.
What legal argument is Trump using to try to change birthright citizenship?
The 14th Amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Historically, the Supreme Court has interpreted “subject to the jurisdiction” to mean that someone is bound by U.S. law, which is true of everyone inside the country. The administration believes this longstanding way of defining jurisdiction is wrong. It argues that foreign nationals who are not legal permanent residents or citizens are not completely subject to U.S. jurisdiction because they owe their primary allegiance to another nation.
Trump’s lawyers also argue that birthright citizenship was only originally intended to apply to the specific case of Black slaves and that past court rulings erred in applying it to everyone born in the U.S.
The groups seeking to block Trump’s order have written that his administration’s arguments run “squarely contrary to the constitutional text, this Court’s precedents, Congress’s dictates, longstanding Executive Branch practice, scholarly consensus, and well over a century of our nation’s everyday practice.”
They add that if the lawmakers who wrote the 14th Amendment had intended to limit the types of people it applies to, “they would have said so.”
What would the impact be?
In 2023, there were an estimated 20 million people living in the U.S. whose children would not become citizens under Trump’s order — roughly 14 million undocumented immigrants and around 6 million people with temporary legal status.
If Trump’s order is allowed to stand, about 255,000 babies born in the U.S. each year would be denied citizenship rights that they would otherwise have, according to an estimate by the Migration Policy Institute and Penn State’s Population Research Institute. Those children would instantly become undocumented immigrants. Some may also be rendered stateless by having no legal claim to reside in any country, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Experts say the end of universal birthright citizenship will affect all babies born in the U.S. because parents will now have to prove that their child qualifies for citizenship.
“We would essentially need a new federal bureaucracy to adjudicate the citizenship of newborns,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, an expert in immigration law, told USA Today.
Those extra bureaucratic steps could create barriers that prevent families from accessing the benefits that they’re entitled to.
“If you say, ‘Well, we don’t know if the baby is a citizen,’ it is highly questionable whether babies will then have Medicaid, SNAP, WIC [food benefits], any access to these critical programs at the most vulnerable time in any of our lives,” Bill Lesley, the president of First Focus on Children, told NPR.
Will the court side with Trump?
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has regularly sided with the president in high-profile cases centered around his executive authority — with the major exception of his tariffs, which were struck down in February. But in his executive order on birthright citizenship, Trump is effectively asserting the right to override more than 150 years’ worth of established precedent on the meaning of the 14th Amendment and redefine what has historically been understood as the “plain language” of the Constitution. That’s a step that even some conservative legal scholars, who would like to see birthright citizenship reformed, believe the court isn’t likely to allow Trump to take.
When will the final decision be released?
The Supreme Court doesn’t issue its rulings on any set schedule. But based on its typical timeline, the final decision will likely come out around the end of June or the beginning of July.
