In keeping with the spirit of the beautiful game now underway in the United States as co-hosts, the scorecard in the landmark citizenship case reads: US Supreme Court 1: President Donald Trump 0. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court struck down President Trump's executive order, signed on his first day in office in January 2025, ending birthright citizenship in keeping with his infamous anti-immigrant electoral promise.
In a 6-3 decision, agreeing with the challengers and the lower courts that had held the executive order unconstitutional, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that children born in the US “to parents unlawfully or temporarily present” are “citizens at birth” under the 14th Amendment. One of the dissenting judges, Justice Samuel Alito, called the ruling “a serious mistake”.
Constitutional Principles Reaffirmed
The ruling is significant at both the material and the constitutional levels. It would make a difference to the lives of thousands of children born in the US to parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the country, including babies born to undocumented migrants and parents on temporary visas and green card applicants.
Fundamentally, it reaffirms the promise held out in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which reads, “All persons born or naturalised, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Passed in the aftermath of the US Civil War, it granted full citizenship rights to freed slaves. Eloquently, Justice Roberts wrote, “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.”
Court Checks Executive Power
The Supreme Court ruling is a testament to the noble values enshrined in the US Constitution; it is equally a demonstration of the highest court in that country weighing in on the side of the Constitution when it was challenged by a powerful and authoritative executive.
As seen in recent times in India and other democracies, apex courts have humoured the executive even when constitutional values were at stake.
President Trump's now-rejected order sought to bypass the interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution by severely restricting automatic citizenship rights. The Supreme Court ruling makes it clear to President Trump that he had signed an unconstitutional order.
This is critical in an era of strongman presidents or prime ministers who claim electoral mandates to unleash authoritarianism in various forms. Driven precisely by this impulse, President Trump declined to accept the ruling.
On social media, he termed it “too bad” and urged Congress to start work to end the “expensive and unfair to our country birthright citizenship”. The last act—like penalty shootouts—may yet unfold, but, for now, the highest court has emphasised that the executive, however powerful, cannot play around with the Constitution.
