The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on June 30 to uphold birthright citizenship, affirming that children born in the United States are American citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Dozens of advocates, attorneys, and elected officials gathered at Foley Square in lower Manhattan to celebrate, with Bushwick-based Make the Road New York co-leading the event alongside the New York Immigration Coalition and Hands Off NYC.
For Aby, a DACA recipient and Make the Road New York member who preferred not to share her last name, the ruling ended months of personal dread. “Last year, I was pregnant when President Trump signed an executive order attempting to take away birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship is a fundamental right of every child born in this country,” she said at the press conference, according to Make the Road New York. “Every day since that executive order was signed until the day I gave birth, I wondered if my newborn would be considered a US citizen or what would happen to him. What would his birth certificate say? What country would he belong to?” she asked. “My three children, from my oldest to my youngest, are US-born and US citizens. This country is my home and the home of my children.”
The ruling followed a January 2025 Trump administration executive order that attempted to strip birthright citizenship from children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants or those here on temporary legal status. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, has for more than 150 years been read to guarantee citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said that “children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship,” according to amNewYork. The majority included Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson fully, and Justice Kavanaugh in part.
New York Attorney General Letitia James joined a coalition that sued the administration over the executive order on January 21, 2025, secured a preliminary injunction blocking it from taking effect, and in February 2026 filed a brief alongside 23 other attorneys general urging the Supreme Court to reject the order, according to James’s office. The ACLU also brought a parallel case; Cecillia Wang, the organization’s national legal director who argued before the high court, said afterward that the decision “reaffirms a fundamental American promise – if you are born here, you are a citizen,” according to amNewYork. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in April 2026.
“Today’s ruling means that hundreds of thousands of families can breathe a little bit easier and know that their child is here to stay,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, according to amNewYork. “Not even the Trump administration can take away their constitutional right to belong here. But let’s be clear on one thing: The attempt to end birthright citizenship isn’t an isolated attack. It’s part of the Trump administration’s broader campaign to go to war against immigrants who make this country what it is.”
James said in a statement: “I am relieved for the children who will never know how close the American dream came to being taken from them, and for the families who will never have to explain to a child why the country they were born in refuses to accept them. Every person born in the United States is an American. That was true yesterday, it is true today, and we will never stop fighting to make sure it remains true tomorrow.”
“We can breathe a sigh of relief today,” Make the Road New York legal director Harold Solis told amNewYork. “But it doesn’t erase everything else that’s happening right now. We’ve seen in the last year even citizens have sometimes been subjected to the forces of immigration enforcement, so I don’t think this solves everything.”
The same week the court issued this ruling, it handed down a separate decision stripping Temporary Protected Status from Haitians and Syrians. According to amNewYork, that decision will effectively end legal status for roughly 40,000 New Yorkers in less than a month, and opens the door for the administration to cut TPS for more than a million people from other countries currently living and working here under that provision.
“While the Supreme Court was wrong in this week’s TPS ruling, today’s decision is a resounding rebuke,” Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, chair of the Brooklyn Democratic Party and the daughter of Haitian immigrants, told Caribbean Life. “Brooklyn Democrats will keep fighting to ensure immigrant families remain safe, protected, and welcome.”
Make the Road New York has more than 30,000 members from immigrant and working-class communities across New York City, Long Island, and Westchester, according to the organization.
Featured image: Courtesy maketheroadny.org
