President Donald Trump is now calling for Congress to write legislation to combat the United States Supreme Court’s decision to protect birthright citizenship.
The Supreme Court’s decision reaffirming birthright citizenship as a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment was met with quick backlash from the Trump administration this past Tuesday. In response to the decision, Trump called for Congress to “start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship,” in a Truth Social post.
The decision, which received a 6-3 vote in support of birthright citizenship, struck down Trump’s executive order from January, 2025, that argued that the 14th Amendment does not explicitly extend citizenship to those whose parents are “unlawfully present” in the country. At the time of the order, several federal judges across the country prohibited the law from going into effect, moving it up to the higher courts.
The Court ruled that Trump’s executive order violated the Constitution. Chief Justice John Roberts, who delivered the opinion of the court, stated that all children born in the U.S. “satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause,” and are “citizens at birth.”
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights – to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”
Republican Senators have taken to X to share their grievances over the ruling, with some citing that birthright citizenship does not apply to children who “violate” immigration laws.
“The Fourteenth Amendment was written to overturn Dred Scott and guarantee citizenship to freed slaves–not to create automatic citizenship for children of those who violate our immigration laws or are only temporarily in the United States,” Sen. Ted Cruz said in an X post. “This decision will only invite further exploitation of our immigration system.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was speaking with the press when the news broke, shared with reporters his discontent with the ruling. Johnson, the Republican Representative from Louisiana, echoed a sentiment that many Trump allies have spoken about: birthright tourism.
“Birthing tourism, they call it: A trend where people come and you just come on to the soil and have your child and then they’re able to avail themselves of the welfare state and everything else,” he said. “It’s one of those things that was intended to serve a noble and important purpose and has been thwarted and overused and abused, and so I’m sure that we’ll continue to look at that.”
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Advocates for birthright citizenship have declared the Supreme Court ruling as a win against Trump’s rampant crackdowns on immigrants in the U.S.
“The president bet his legacy trying to secure this policy win — even attending the argument in person — and he lost. Most notably, the three justices appointed by the president — and the chief justice — rejected his gambit,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement yesterday. “This is the beginning of the turning of the tide against President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.”
Trump has advocated against birthright citizenship for over a decade. Congress codified the language affirming that anyone born in the U.S. is entitled to American citizenship over 80 years ago in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. If Trump were to go forth with Congress amending the Constitution to bypass the Court’s ruling, it would take two-thirds approval in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and then be ratified by three-fourths of the states.