Supreme Court rejects President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order
The Supreme Court has lifted restrictions on birthright citizenship, the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court’s final decision this term striking down President Donald Trump’s attempt to limit who can automatically become a citizen at birth was not what the president had hoped for.
But the ruling against Trump was surprisingly close, given that birthright citizenship has been considered a settled issue for more than 125 years.
And even though a majority of the justices ruled against Trump in his two most important cases: birthright citizenship and tariffs, Trump won many other victories at the high court.
Here’s a breakdown of what this decision means for President Trump and his policies.
President Trump develops new plan for birthright citizenship
The Supreme Court on June 30 rejected President Trump’s attempt to redefine who is an American by striking down the birthright citizenship restrictions that had been the centerpiece of his hard-line approach to immigration..
Five of the nine justices said an executive order restricting birthright citizenship that President Trump signed on his first day in office violated the Constitution’s citizenship clause. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said this simply violated the 1952 Immigration Act.
That gave President Trump hope that Republicans in Congress might change the law.
“The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, which is too bad for our country, but can easily be made up for in Congress with support from the President. This is what is being decided now in this process,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
But Trump will need to convince one of the five judges who ruled against him on the Constitution’s civil rights clause that any new law is consistent with the 14th Amendment.
President Trump hails ruling against transgender athletes as ‘huge victory’
In another landmark ruling on June 30, the court said states can ban transgender women and girls from competing on women’s sports teams without violating the Constitution or federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education.
The president called the ruling a “huge victory” on social media.
Trump has made opposition to transgender women’s participation on women’s teams a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign, and as president he has moved to cut federal funding to schools that allow transgender women to participate in women’s sports and women’s sports.
The Department of Justice helped West Virginia and Idaho defend their bans in the Supreme Court.
But while the administration is separately seeking to block states from allowing transgender girls to play on women’s teams, the Justice Department has asked the court to rule only that the ban is allowed at this time, not to get into whether it is necessary.
Campaign finance ruling could give Republicans a boost for now
On June 30, the court’s conservative majority upheld a challenge by Vice President J.D. Vance and other Republicans to one of the remaining checks for funds in politics.
The court overturned a quarter-century-old ruling aimed at circumventing restrictions that wealthy donors can place on federal candidates by funneling money through political parties.
The court’s ruling could benefit Republicans, at least in the short term, because Democratic candidates are better at raising small donations and are less reliant on party funding.
“This opinion may be of modest help to the Republican Party, which raises more money than Democratic organizations,” Rick Hasen, an election expert and law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote on his election law blog. “But in the long term, we can expect greater parity.”
Limits on a 90-year-old president’s ability to remove him from office will be lifted.
President Trump said the court’s June 29 decision to fire Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission was “the biggest and most consequential decision ever made by the court” for presidential power.
The court overturned 90 years of precedent in a case called Humphrey’s Executors v. United States, which limited how presidents can remove independent board members.
Congress established various boards with representatives from both parties. But Trump insisted he should have control over all executive branch positions and be free to fire and replace members.
Roberts, writing for the majority in a decision that could affect more than a dozen government agencies, said the president “must have the support of trusted officials.”
“It is a great honor to be the sitting president who won this historic and unprecedented ruling, one of the most important presidential powers ever granted,” Trump wrote on social media.
Court upholds Federal Reserve independence
In contrast, President Trump downplayed the Supreme Court’s June 29 decision blocking Lisa Cook’s immediate removal from office, posting on social media that the court had sent the case back to lower courts “based on rigorous procedures.”
But Chief Justice John Roberts wrote to the court’s majority that the Trump administration “has not shown that it is likely to prevail” in lower courts defending the circumstances surrounding Cook’s firing. Roberts also emphasized that Congress has established protections for the Fed president and that the United States has a tradition of protecting the central bank from political influence.
The Federal Reserve is a powerful economic regulator and is responsible for monetary policy, which can affect inflation and unemployment rates. Its board is made up of governors appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate for varying terms of 14 years.
President Trump’s support for firing Cook, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden and confirmed in 2022, would have made the Fed even more vulnerable regardless of who is currently in the Oval Office.
Trump claimed he could immediately fire Cook over allegations that he made false statements that affected mortgage rates on two properties he purchased. Cook said he looked forward to “debunking” Trump’s claims and argued that his firing was illegal because the Fed’s board has historically been independent and its directors have legal protections.
States can receive and count mail-in ballots after Election Day.
In a significant loss for Mr. Trump, the court on June 29 upheld a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and arrive up to five days later to be counted.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Roberts joined the court’s three liberal justices in upholding the law. Barrett wrote that voters have to make a decision by a certain date, but that doesn’t mean they have to receive their ballots that day.
President Trump has long opposed mail-in voting, arguing that it is susceptible to corruption, but in March he voted by mail himself. He cited the court’s decision as he continued to press Congress to require voters to present identification and proof of citizenship at polling places and to register, and to ban mail-in voting except for voters who are sick, traveling or serving in the military.
“There is no excuse for anyone, politician or not, to violate the three requirements listed above,” Trump said on social media. “The only reason I object is cheating!”
According to a 2025 report from the Brookings Institution, incidents of fraud related to mail-in voting are extremely rare, at about 4 cases per 10 million mail-in votes. Research also shows that non-citizen voting is virtually non-existent.
Trump wins three important cases involving humanitarian aid, asylum and green cards
Significant decisions handed down in the final weeks of the Supreme Court’s term confirmed three of President Trump’s policies: One allowed the suspension of humanitarian programs that allow people fleeing dangerous countries to temporarily live in the United States. In another example, it allowed asylum-seeking refugees to be turned away at the border. Third, it allowed for tighter scrutiny of green card holders returning from abroad.
A humanitarian program called Temporary Protected Status granted work permits and protection from deportation to 350,000 Haitians and Syrians. But the administration proposed ending protected status for 1.3 million people in 13 countries combined.
The asylum decision allowed the government to turn refugees back at the border rather than admit them to await a decision on their claims. Critics of the decision said it would encourage refugees to enter the country illegally, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing that “many more people will die.”
The court also agreed to allow immigration authorities to consider criminal charges against green card holders returning from overseas when deciding whether to allow them to return home.
Court overturns emergency tariffs, the centerpiece of President Trump’s economic policy.
The court overturned President Trump’s emergency tariffs in February, gutting the centerpiece of his economic policy, forcing him to return more than $166 billion he had already collected, and stripping him of a key foreign policy tool.
The 6-3 ruling found that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 does not give President Trump the authority to impose tariffs on his own. But other laws, such as the 1974 Trade Act, allow the Trump administration to investigate and impose tariffs on unfair trade practices, such as forced labor and overproduction, all of which the administration is pursuing.
President Trump called opponents of the tariffs “nasty, ignorant and loud” and accused the judges of acting out of fear of critics. He called the plaintiffs in the lawsuit “scumbags.”
