The United States Supreme Court has rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, blocking one of his major immigration policies aimed at changing the longstanding rule that people born on American soil automatically become citizens.
The right to citizenship for people born or naturalised in the United States is protected under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, a provision Trump attempted to challenge on the first day of his second term in office.
Chief Justice John Roberts, while delivering the ruling, said the constitutional promise of citizenship remains protected.
“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 said.
The ruling follows earlier decisions by lower courts, which had already blocked Trump’s order while the legal battle continued.
The decision represents a major setback for Trump’s immigration agenda, as birthright citizenship has remained a key part of the debate over illegal immigration in the United States.
Trump’s relationship with the Supreme Court has also become more tense in recent months, despite the fact that he appointed three of the court’s nine justices.
The Republican president had repeatedly criticised the court and predicted that the justices would rule against him in the birthright citizenship case.
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