Key Points
- The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 on June 30, 2026 that children born in the United States are citizens, striking down President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship.
- Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY24) had joined an amicus brief asking the Court to end birthright citizenship. The Court rejected her position.
- Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Barrett, and Jackson. Justice Kavanaugh agreed the order was unlawful but on narrower grounds.
- Because five justices grounded the ruling in the 14th Amendment itself, Congress cannot undo it with ordinary legislation. It would take a constitutional amendment.
Rep. Claudia Tenney asked the Supreme Court to end birthright citizenship. On June 30, the Supreme Court said no.
For more than 125 years, the law was simple: if you were born in the United States, you were a citizen of the United States. Tenney and her allies wanted the Court to change that, so that a baby’s citizenship would depend on the parents’ immigration status rather than the baby’s place of birth. In a 6–3 decision in Trump v. Barbara, the Court declined — and it did so in terms that leave no room for a rematch.
Tenney wasn’t alone. Four other House Republicans — Reps. Andy Biggs, Cory Mills, John Rose, and Barry Moore — joined her friend-of-the-court (amicus) submission, part of a wave of eighteen briefs filed in support of the Trump administration’s position.
What the Court Decided
The case grew out of Executive Order 14160, which President Trump signed on the first day of his second term. The order declared that children born to parents who are in the country illegally or on temporary visas are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not citizens. Lower courts blocked it immediately, and it never took effect.
The Supreme Court has now killed it for good. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said there was “scant evidence” for the administration’s reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment, and reaffirmed the rule the Court laid down in 1898: the Citizenship Clause grants citizenship to nearly every child born on American soil.
The 6–3 Lineup
*Kavanaugh agreed the order was unlawful, but on statutory rather than constitutional grounds — making the constitutional holding 5–4.
The lineup matters. Five justices held that the executive order violates the Constitution itself. Justice Kavanaugh agreed the order was unlawful but would have struck it down under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the 1952 federal statute that codified birthright citizenship, rather than the Constitution.
Note who’s in that majority: Barrett and Kavanaugh, two of the three justices Trump appointed. The president attended the April 1 oral argument in person — the first sitting president in modern history to do so — and watched his own appointees signal skepticism of his signature immigration policy.
Justice Thomas argued the 14th Amendment was aimed at formerly enslaved Black Americans, who owed allegiance to no other country, and shouldn’t extend to children of temporary visitors. Justice Alito, writing separately, called the ruling a “serious mistake” and complained that it preserves an incentive for illegal immigration. Six justices disagreed.
A Question Answered in 1898 — and Again Now
Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Section 1 reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Congress wrote those words in 1868 to answer Dred Scott and the Black Codes — the post-Civil War laws by which former slave states tried to strip newly freed people of movement, work, and basic rights. The amendment settled the question once and for all: born here means citizen.
Thirty years later, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Court confirmed the rule reaches beyond freed slaves. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who were barred by law from ever becoming citizens; when the government denied him re-entry to the country under the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Court ruled 6–2 that the 14th Amendment made him a citizen at birth. That decision stood for 128 years as settled law.
In Trump v. Barbara, the administration tried to thread a needle: it told the justices it wasn’t asking them to overrule Wong Kim Ark, just to reread it so that citizenship hinged on whether the parents were “domiciled” in the United States. The majority found the domicile theory had no meaningful support in the amendment’s text or history — the Reconstruction Congress chose a simple birthplace rule precisely because a parentage test would have been a legal quagmire.
What Happens Now
Had Tenney’s side won, an estimated 250,000 babies born in the U.S. each year to temporary visa holders and undocumented immigrants would have been denied citizenship, creating a new class of residents with unresolved rights to education, healthcare, and military service. None of that will happen. The rule remains what it has been since 1868: born here means citizen.
President Trump responded on Truth Social by urging Congress to end birthright citizenship through legislation, insisting no constitutional amendment is needed. That’s wrong as a matter of law. Five justices held that the 14th Amendment itself guarantees birthright citizenship, and Congress cannot repeal a constitutional guarantee by statute. Ending birthright citizenship now requires a constitutional amendment: two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by 38 states.
That legal reality also dooms a bill Tenney herself is sponsoring — the Constitutional Citizenship Clarification Act, which would deny citizenship by statute to children of parents unlawfully present in the U.S. We take a closer look at that bill, and what the ruling means for it, in a companion piece.
The decision came down on June 30, 2026 — four days before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. For more than a century, the rule has been clear: if you were born in the United States, you were a citizen. Rep. Claudia Tenney asked the Supreme Court to change that. The Court’s answer, delivered on the eve of the nation’s semiquincentennial, was no.
