The US Supreme Court has struck down President Donald Trump’s attempt to end the longstanding practice of granting citizenship to anyone born on United States soil, delivering a major blow to his attempts to overhaul immigration policy.In a 6-3 ruling on Tuesday, the court rejected an executive order signed by Trump shortly after taking office in January 2025, which barred those born in the US to parents on temporary legal statuses or without documentation from automatically receiving US citizenship.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listAhead of the July 4 holiday marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, the court’s ruling reaffirmed what it means to be a US citizen, however – a principle grounded in the 14th Amendment of 1868 in the aftermath of the civil war, which ended the practice of slavery in the US.Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, hailed the US practice of birthright citizenship. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land’,” he wrote. “We keep that promise today.”What was Trump’s case?In line with his hardline anti-immigration agenda, Trump’s executive order stated that if one parent is “unlawfully present in the United States” and the other is not a citizen or a “lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth”, the child cannot claim birthright.It added that if a parent’s presence in the country is “lawful but temporary” through a tourist, student or work visa and the other parent is not a US citizen, birthright citizenship cannot be passed on to the child. Advertisement Birth …
