In an eagerly awaited decision on the final day of its term, the United States Supreme Court has rejected President Donald Trump’s historic bid to restrict birthright citizenship.
The 6-3 ruling delivered on Tuesday held that the US constitution guarantees citizenship at birth to children born in the country, including those whose parents are undocumented immigrants or are residing in the United States on a temporary basis.
The decision marks a significant setback for Trump’s efforts to narrow the scope of the citizenship clause contained in the fourteenth amendment.
Trump signed an executive order last year on the first day of his second term in the White House decreeing that children born to parents in the US illegally or on temporary visas would not automatically become US citizens.
Lower courts blocked the move, ruling that under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment nearly everyone born on US soil is an American citizen.
Writing for the majority, the chief justice, John Roberts has now ruled that the constitutional guarantee of citizenship remains a foundational principle of American democracy.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land’.
“We keep that promise today,” Roberts wrote.
In an unprecedented move for a sitting US president, Trump personally attended oral arguments on birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court in April.
Trump stayed for the presentation by his solicitor general, John Sauer, but did not remain for the arguments of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Cecillia Wang, who defended birthright citizenship.
The Trump administration argued that the 14th Amendment, passed in the wake of the 1861-1865 Civil War, addresses citizenship rights of former slaves and not the children of undocumented migrants or visitors.
Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship was premised on the notion that anyone in the United States illegally, or on a visa, is not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country and therefore excluded from automatic citizenship.
