The Supreme Court sided with a New Hampshire woman in her challenge against President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship.
In a 6-3 ruling, justices struck down the executive order Trump signed on the first day of his second term that sought to restrict who qualifies as a U.S. citizen.
The court’s ruling, drawing on the history behind the Fourteenth Amendment, upholds the constitutional principle that children born on U.S. soil are granted automatic citizenship, even if their parents are undocumented immigrants.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land’ … We keep that promise today.”
Trump’s order was part of sweeping changes to the country’s immigration landscape. Under his order, children born in the U.S. wouldn’t be considered citizens if their mother was in the country illegally and their father wasn’t a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
The lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit, identified under the pseudonym “Barbara” in court documents, is from Honduras and living in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.
Barbara came to the U.S. in 2024, and her asylum application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is still pending, according to court documents. When the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU of New Hampshire last June, she was pregnant with her fourth child, due in October 2025.
Under those requirements, the lawsuit stated, Barbara worried her baby would not be granted U.S. citizenship and be “unjustly denied the security, rights and opportunities” that come with it.
The Supreme Court’s ruling upheld the one made in New Hampshire by federal Judge Joseph Laplante.
SangYeob Kim, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU-New Hampshire, served as co-counsel on the case.
“This decision is about what it means to be an American under our Constitution, and the court’s unwavering opinion makes clear that if you are born here, you are a citizen,” Kim said in a statement. “We thank the brave immigrant parents and their children who brought this lawsuit to the highest court in the land to protect what we have long known: no politician — including the president — can decide who is worthy of citizenship. We share in their overwhelming emotions, and relief, in our fight to protect the constitutional rights for all born in our nation.”
U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander, a Democrat representing Concord and the second district, had joined other members of Congress in filing an amicus brief on the case. She celebrated the ruling.
“We fought President Trump’s Executive Order from the moment it was issued,” Goodlander said in a statement. “Today is a good day for our Constitution, for families across this country, and for the cornerstone principle that in America, birthright citizenship cannot be stripped away by presidential decree.”
