Trump asks SCOTUS to uphold birthright citizenship restrictions

President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to reinstate his executive order that ends birthright citizenship for children of parents in the country illegally or temporarily. The petition, filed on Friday, challenges a series of lower court rulings that blocked the order before it could take effect. If the justices agree to hear the case, they will decide whether the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil.

On his first day back at the White House, Trump signed Executive Order 14160, directing federal agencies to deny recognition of citizenship at birth to children of noncitizen parents without permanent legal status. Civil rights groups and individual plaintiffs immediately sued, arguing that the order violated the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which has been interpreted for more than a century to guarantee citizenship to most children born in the U.S.

“This executive order is illegal, full stop, and no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that. We will continue to ensure that no baby’s citizenship is ever stripped away by this cruel and senseless order,” Cody Wofsy, an attorney with the ACLU, told Reuters.

Federal judges in multiple states moved to halt the order before it could be enforced. In July, U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante in New Hampshire certified a nationwide class of children who would be affected and issued an injunction, concluding the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on constitutional grounds. In August, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in Maryland issued another nationwide injunction, writing that the policy risked inflicting “irreparable harm” on families and children.

Both rulings came after a June Supreme Court decision that limited district courts’ ability to impose broad injunctions, though the justices did not decide the order’s constitutionality.

In the petition, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote, “The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security. Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”

Once implemented, the order would deny citizenship to more than 150,000 newborns annually, according to federal estimates cited in court filings. The Supreme Court is expected to decide later this year whether to take up the case, with arguments possible in early 2026 if review is granted.