July 2, 2026
By Mills Fleming & Lauren Harter
For more than a century, the rule has been straightforward: if you are born on U.S. soil, you are a U.S. citizen. Tuesday, in Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court decided to keep it that way, striking down the executive order that sought to deny citizenship to children born here to parents living in the country illegally or on temporary visas.
The decision comes just days before the nation’s 250th birthday, and on its face, it is a clear win. The vote was 6 to 3. Birthright citizenship stands, and for families, hospitals, and employers, nothing changes. A U.S. birth certificate still means what it always has.
But the vote count understates how divided the Court was on the central question.
Only five justices agreed that the Constitution itself guarantees birthright citizenship. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for that majority, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson. They grounded the ruling in the plain text of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment as that text has been understood since the Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that a child born in this country is a citizen regardless of the parents’ legal status.
The sixth vote came from Justice Kavanaugh, who reached the same result but on different grounds. He concluded the order was unlawful because it violated a federal statute first enacted in 1940, not the Constitution. He also wrote that Congress could amend that statute to narrow birthright citizenship without running afoul of the Constitution as he reads it.
Practically speaking, the Court’s decision does not change the status quo on birthright citizenship, at least for now. But the constitutional footing is narrower than the 6 to 3 tally suggests. One justice has laid out a statutory path for lawmakers who may want to revisit the issue, though any such effort would still face constitutional scrutiny. So, this is almost certainly not the last we will hear of it.
HunterMaclean’s Immigration team will continue to monitor these critical updates.
