Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s proposed limits

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

The justices relied on a long-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, and more recent federal laws in ruling that anyone born in the country, with very limited exceptions, is a citizen.

The Republican president’s restrictions had been blocked by several lower courts and had not taken effect anywhere in the U.S.

During arguments in April, both conservative and liberal justices questioned the order’s legality in a momentous case that was magnified by Trump’s unprecedented attendance in the courtroom.

The case framed another test of Trump’s assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court with a conservative majority and a robust view of presidential power that has largely ruled in his favor. In the notable exceptions when the court has not, Trump has responded with starkly personal criticisms of the justices.

The justices ruled on Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions.

The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on the first day of his second term, is part of his administration’s broad immigration crackdown.

Marylanders said they were relieved by the ruling.

Donna Batkis, a bilingual psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker in the Baltimore region who frequently works with immigrants, stepped out of her meeting in tears with happiness and relief.

The news she said punched her in the stomach.

“It’s been such hell for so many people,” she said. “Women have been under so much stuff, arrests in their pregnancies. It’s been horrible. It’s caused all sorts of problems. This is wonderful.

The ruling will reduce fear, save families and preserve the dignity and hope of all Americans, Batkis said.

Most of Lutherville-based attorney Maria Colon’s clients are parents who have children that were born in the U.S.

Colon said she has witnessed “the fear and uncertainty so many immigrant families have endured in recent months.”

Today’s Supreme Court decision provides “much needed stability and hope” to families and reaffirms that constitutional rights “must be preserved, even during times of significant legal and political change,” she said.

Shana Khader, deputy legal director for We Are CASA, the largest immigrant advocacy organization in Maryland, called the ruling a “historic victory” and a crucial check on presidential power.

“The Supreme Court has reaffirmed what generations of children and families have known to be true: citizenship is a constitutional guarantee,” Khader said in a statement. “No president has the authority to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution or decide which babies count as citizens and which do not.”

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Baltimore-based refugee resettlement organization Global Refuge said in an emailed statement that the Fourteenth Amendment is “stronger than the forces trying to hollow it out.”

“Somewhere today, a baby will be born in an American hospital to immigrant parents. That baby is a citizen. Not conditionally, not provisionally, and certainly not at the discretion of any president,” she said.

Birthright citizenship was the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. The justices previously struck down global tariffs Trump had imposed under an emergency powers law that had never been used that way.

Trump reacted furiously to the late February tariffs decision, saying he was ashamed of the justices who ruled against him and calling them unpatriotic.

He also seemed to recognize the court was likely to rule against him on birthright citizenship, too, using his Truth Social platform to criticize “dumb judges and justices” and wealthy pregnant women from China and elsewhere who come to the U.S. to give birth so their newborns will have American citizenship.

Trump’s order would have upended widely held views that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born in the U.S., excluding only the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.

The amendment was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship, though the Citizenship Clause is written more broadly. “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,” it reads.

In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down Trump’s executive order as illegal. The decisions have invoked the high court’s 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which held that the U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.

The Trump administration argued that the common view of citizenship is wrong, asserting that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore are not entitled to citizenship. The order directed federal agencies not to issue documents that demonstrate citizenship, such as passports, to the children of some immigrants born on U.S. soil. It also directed federal agencies not to accept documents from state and local governments intending to show proof of citizenship, such as birth certificates, for the same individuals.

More than one-quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year would have been affected by the executive order, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute.

While Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his rhetoric and actions, the birthright citizenship restrictions also would have applied to people who are legally in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards, or permanent resident status.

Banner reporters John-John Williams IV and Danny Zawodny contributed to this article.