Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to restrict birthright citizenship

Handing President Donald Trump a stinging defeat, the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected his audacious attempt to restrict birthright citizenship in the United States — a right long woven into the fabric of American society — scuttling one of his top priorities in his crackdown on immigration.

The 6-3 ruling marked the second time this year that the court has invalidated a major Trump initiative, following its February decision to strike down his ​sweeping global tariffs.

The justices upheld a lower court's decision that blocked Trump's executive order directing US agencies not to recognise the citizenship of children born in the US if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident, also called ‌a "green card" holder.

Challengers to Trump's order argued that it violates language in the US Constitution's 14th Amendment that confers citizenship to those born in the United States who are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".

Trump, who has repeatedly tested the limits of presidential power in domestic and foreign policy, issued the order last year on his first day back in office as part of a suite of policies to crack down on legal and illegal immigration. Critics have accused the Republican president of racial and religious discrimination in his approach to immigration.

The Supreme Court weighs in on what it means to be an American citizen just ahead of the July 4 holiday, when the US marks the 250th anniversary of ​its founding.

Ahead of the ruling, some experts had estimated that Trump's directive could affect the legal status of as many as 250,000 babies born each year and could require the families of millions more to prove the citizenship status of their newborns.

A class-action suit

The legal challenge to Trump's directive, considered ​by the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, involved a class-action lawsuit filed in New Hampshire by parents and children whose citizenship was threatened by the directive.

The 14th Amendment has long been interpreted as guaranteeing ⁠citizenship for babies born in the US, with only narrow exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats or members of an enemy occupying force.

The provision at issue, known as the Citizenship Clause, states: "All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, ​are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

The administration has asserted that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means that being born in the US is not enough for citizenship, and excludes the babies of immigrants who are in the country illegally or whose presence ​is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas.

Citizenship is granted only to the children of those whose "primary allegiance" is to the US, including citizens and permanent residents, the administration has argued. Such allegiance is established through "lawful domicile", which lawyers for the administration define as "lawful, permanent residence within a nation, with intent to remain".

Read More: US Supreme Court sides with Trump in asylum-processing case

When the Supreme Court considered the case on April 1, Trump made history as the first sitting president to attend arguments before the top US judicial body, though he left midway through, not long after the lawyer arguing against the administration had begun.

'Birth tourism'

During the arguments, UA Solicitor General D. John Sauer, representing the administration, said the ​promise of citizenship for virtually any baby born on US soil has spawned what he called a sprawling industry of "birth tourism".

Sauer said that "uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States in recent decades" to secure citizenship for their children. Asked to ​explain how serious an issue "birth tourism" has become, Sauer primarily cited media reports and conceded that "no one knows for sure".

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 that ended slavery in the US, and overturned a notorious 1857 Supreme Court decision that had ‌declared that people of ⁠African descent could never be US citizens.

During arguments, Sauer described what he saw as the limited purpose of the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause, saying it was adopted "to grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and their children, whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile here".

An 1898 precedent

The challengers said the Supreme Court already had settled the question of birthright citizenship in an 1898 case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which recognised that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship by birth on US soil, including to the children of foreign nationals.

The administration contended that the 1898 precedent supported Trump's order because, according to the court's ruling in that case, at the time of his birth, Wong Kim Ark's parents had permanent domicile and residence in the US.

Some of the justices pushed back on that during arguments, with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch telling Sauer: "Well, I'm not sure ​how much you want to rely on Wong Kim Ark."

Trump, for years, ​had threatened to limit who qualifies for citizenship at birth.

Trump wrote ⁠on social media last year: "Birthright citizenship was not meant for people taking vacations to become permanent citizens of the United States of America, and bringing their families with them, all the time laughing at the 'suckers' that we are!"

"But the drug cartels love it! We are, for the sake of being politically correct, a stupid country but, in actuality, this is the exact opposite of being politically correct, and it is yet another point that leads ​to the dysfunction of America," Trump wrote.

Concord, New Hampshire-based US District Judge Joseph Laplante, in July 2025, let the challenge to Trump's order by the plaintiffs in the case before him proceed as a class, thus ​allowing the policy to be blocked nationwide.

The ⁠Supreme Court last year gave Trump an initial victory in the birthright citizenship context in a ruling restricting the power of federal judges to curb presidential policies nationwide. That decision, however, did not resolve the legality of Trump's directive.

Immigration rulings

The court's conservative majority has backed Trump on other major immigration-related policies since he returned to the presidency.

For instance, the court on June 25 cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants of a humanitarian status that protects them from deportation. On the same day, it sided with him by backing the US government's authority to turn away asylum seekers when officials deem ⁠the US-Mexico border crossings ​too overburdened to handle additional claims.

In other cases, it let Trump expand mass deportation measures on an interim basis while legal challenges play out, such as ending humanitarian protections for certain ​migrants, deporting people to countries where they have no ties and carrying out aggressive immigration raids that can target individuals based on their race or language.

The court, however, has not always ruled in Trump's favour. In February, it struck down sweeping tariffs he pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies. And on Monday, it refused to let him fire Federal Reserve Governor ​Lisa Cook.

Blears way for transgender sports bans

The court also cleared the way for states to impose restrictions on transgender student athletes, upholding laws in West Virginia and Idaho banning them from female sports teams — a contentious issue enmeshed in ​the nation's culture wars.

The justices overturned decisions by lower courts siding with transgender students who challenged the bans in the two states as violating the US Constitution and a federal anti-discrimination law.

The Idaho ‌and West Virginia laws designate sports teams at public schools, including universities, according to "biological sex" and bar "students of the male sex" from female teams. Twenty-five other states have similar laws on the books.

The court decided 9-0 that the state laws do not violate the Title IX civil rights statute that bars discrimination in education "on the basis of sex".

The justices, however, divided along ideological lines, with the six conservative justices in the majority, holding that the laws also do not violate the Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law. The three liberal ​justices said a factual dispute in the West Virginia case should have precluded resolving that issue.

The ruling was authored by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

"Consistent with Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that the ​states may maintain women's and girls' sports for biological females. They may determine eligibility for women's and girls' sports based on biological sex. The Constitution and Title IX do ⁠not require an overhaul of women's and girls' sports throughout America," Kavanaugh wrote.

Trump's administration, ​which has cracked down on transgender rights, has backed the states in the litigation.

Idaho and West Virginia said ⁠the laws preserve fair and safe competition for women and girls, while critics see the measures as part of a broader assault on the ​rights of transgender Americans.

The students who challenged the measures said they discriminate based on a person's sex or status as transgender in violation of the ​Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law, as well as the Title IX civil rights statute that bars discrimination in education "on the basis of sex".

"Sports are different from, say, a typical employment or educational opportunity where equal protection often may require that the government generally treat an individual without regard to the individual's sex," Kavanaugh wrote. "In the sports context, by contrast, everyone agrees that the states may maintain separate women's and men's teams — in other words, that the states may make distinctions based on sex — because of the inherent physical differences between women and men."

Kavanaugh said Title IX was a landmark law that "promoted equal opportunity for female student-athletes ​and has facilitated the extraordinary growth of women's and girls' sports over the past 54 years".

The term "sex" in the 1972 statute, he said, "cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex". Kavanaugh said the states' laws ​likewise did not violate the Equal Protection Clause by barring transgender girls from playing on female sports teams, saying the bans furthered the states' substantial interests in "safety and competitive fairness".

Major 2025 ruling

In another major transgender rights ruling, the Supreme Court in a case from Tennessee last year let states ban medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones for ​people under age 18 experiencing gender dysphoria. That term refers to the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between ​a person's gender identity and sex at birth.

The Supreme Court has backed other restrictions on transgender people, letting Trump ban transgender ‌people from the ⁠military and bar passport applicants from selecting the sex reflecting their gender identities for the document.

The court in 2020 delivered a landmark ruling protecting transgender people from workplace discrimination under a federal law called Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which contains wording similar to Title IX.

Trump’s policies

The issue of transgender athletes playing on female sports teams has become part of the US culture wars.

Trump has taken a hard line on transgender ​rights since returning to office in ​January 2025. He has cast ⁠the gender identity of transgender people as a lie and issued multiple executive orders to limit their rights, including one involving sports participation.

The challenge to West Virginia's law was brought by Becky Pepper-Jackson and her mother, Heather ​Jackson. Pepper-Jackson attends high school in Bridgeport, West Virginia and participates in shot put and discus.

The Idaho ​challenge was brought by ⁠Lindsay Hecox, a transgender student who previously participated in football and running clubs at Boise State University, a public university.

Hecox decided to quit playing sports and sought to dismiss the case in part due to a fear of harassment and growing intolerance toward transgender people. Hecox's lawyers argued that the development ⁠rendered this ​challenge moot.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in January. Its conservative justices raised concerns about imposing a ​uniform rule on the entire country amid disagreement and uncertainty over whether medications like puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones eliminate male physiological advantages in sports.

Strikes down curbs on coordinated campaign spending

In a third ruling, the court again struck down campaign spending limits, this time rejecting federal restrictions on coordinated spending between political parties and their candidates on free speech grounds.

The ruling comes ​as major Republican committees head toward the November midterm elections with a significant cash advantage over their Democratic counterparts.

Siding with Vice President JD Vance and other ‌Republican challengers, the court ruled 6-3 that a cap on the amount of money parties can spend on campaigns with input from candidates violates the US Constitution's First Amendment protections against government abridgement of freedom of speech. A lower court had upheld the limits.

The court's six conservative justices were in the majority, while its three liberal justices dissented.

Vance was running for the US Senate in Ohio when the lawsuit challenging the restrictions was filed in ​2022.

The Supreme Court issues its campaign finance ruling with the November midterm elections looming, as Trump's fellow Republicans seek to retain control of Congress.

The three major Republican committees — ​the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee — ended May with $256 million in cash and no debt. ⁠That was more than double the roughly $126 million held by their Democratic counterparts, who also carried more than $18 million in debt.

Coordinated party expenditures

Trump's administration backed the challenge to the limits on the ​type of political spending at issue, formally called coordinated party expenditures. The challenge was brought in 2022 by two Republican committees, Republican former congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio and Vance, who was ​running for the US Senate in Ohio at the time.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, in several rulings since 2010 has chipped away at campaign finance laws. These include rulings striking down federal limits on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions and the overall amount an individual can spend on federal political contributions as First Amendment violations.

A 1971 law called the Federal Election Campaign Act regulates fundraising and spending in US ​elections by limiting the amount that can be spent on a candidate, with the aim of preventing corruption.

Under that law, spending by a political party to advocate for or against a ​candidate that is not coordinated with a candidate's campaign is considered an "independent expenditure" — and not subject to a cap.

Spending that is coordinated between a party and a campaign, however, has been restricted.

These spending limits have varied ‌based on ⁠the population of the state where the candidate is running for office, lower in states with smaller populations and higher in those with larger populations. In 2025, restrictions ranged from around $127,000 to $3.9 million for Senate candidates and from around $63,000 to $127,000 for House of Representatives candidates.

The Cincinnati-based US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024 upheld the limits, concluding that they comported with the Constitution. The 6th Circuit said it was required to follow a 2001 Supreme Court ruling arising from Colorado that addressed the very same issue.

On appeal, the plaintiffs said that developments in campaign finance over the intervening decades, ​including shifts in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence, have ​eroded the rationale underlying that 2001 ruling ⁠and urged the justices to consider overruling it.

Because the Federal Election Commission under Trump declined to defend the provision of federal law challenged by Vance and the other plaintiffs, the Supreme Court appointed lawyer Roman Martinez to do so. It also granted a request by the Democratic National ​Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to intervene to defend the spending limits.

Election-related decisions

The Supreme Court has issued multiple ​rulings during its current term ⁠that have election implications.

The justices on Monday backed state laws that allow mail-in ballots received after Election Day to be counted, rejecting a Republican-led challenge to a five-day grace period in Mississippi and dealing a setback to Trump.

The court in April gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts ahead of the midterms. Black and ⁠Latino voters ​tend to support Democratic candidates.

That decision prompted several Republican-led states to pursue redrawn electoral maps ahead of the midterms ​in an effort to put at risk US House seats considered safely Democratic-held.