Trump asks Supreme Court to review ban on birthright citizenship

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to intervene and allow a narrow version of his executive order banning birthright citizenship to move forward, challenging three nationwide injunctions brought in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state.

Judges in those states immediately moved to block President Donald Trump’s order banning birthright citizenship, which he signed on his first day in office. 

All three courts blocked the ruling nationwide – something lawyers for the Trump administration argued in their Supreme Court filing is overly broad.

In the court filing Thursday, acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris said the courts had gone too far, and asked the Supreme Court justices to limit the scope of the rulings to cover only individuals directly impacted by the relevant courts. 

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President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2025. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“These cases – which involve challenges to the President’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order concerning birthright citizenship – raise important constitutional questions with major ramifications for securing the border,” Harris wrote.

“But at this stage, the government comes to this Court with a ‘modest’ request: while the parties litigate weighty merits questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purpor[t] to cover every person in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power.”

The executive order in question sought to clarify the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

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The U.S Customs and Border Protection building on 14th Street in Washington, D.C. (iStock)

Instead, the language put forth by the Trump administration, and subsequently blocked, would have clarified that individuals born to illegal immigrant parents, or those who were here legally but on temporary non-immigrant visas, are not citizens by birthright.

To date, no court has sided with the Trump administration’s executive order seeking to ban birthright citizenship, though multiple district courts have blocked it from taking effect. 

The Department of Justice, for its part, has sought to characterize the order as an “integral part of President Trump’s broader effort to repair the United States’ immigration system, and to address the ongoing crisis at the southern border.”

The executive order Trump signed was originally slated to come into force Feb. 19, and would have impacted the hundreds of thousands of children born in the U.S. annually.  

Supreme Court justices attend President Donald Trump’s inauguration at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2025. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

More than 22 U.S. states and immigrants’ rights groups quickly sued the Trump administration to block the ban on birthright citizenship, arguing in court filings that the executive order is both unconstitutional and “unprecedented.”

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The states have also argued that the 14th Amendment does, in fact, guarantee citizenship to persons born on U.S. soil and naturalized in the U.S.

The U.S. is one of roughly 30 countries where birthright citizenship is applied.