The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that children born on American soil to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the country are citizens at birth, delivering a setback to Idaho’s attorney general and two dozen other Republican attorneys general who had urged the justices to restrict birthright citizenship.

Background: A Day-One Executive Order

President Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office — January 20, 2025 — directing federal agencies to deny citizenship documents to children born in the United States to parents who are neither citizens nor lawful permanent residents. The order drew immediate legal challenges across the country.

Four separate federal district courts moved to block the directive, each concluding that it conflicted with the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment. The legal fight ultimately reached the Supreme Court.

Idaho Joins Republican Coalition

Idaho’s attorney general formally announced the state’s support for the administration’s position on March 31, joining a coalition of 23 other Republican attorneys general who filed with the Supreme Court asking the justices to eliminate birthright citizenship as it has long been understood. The coalition argued that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the Citizenship Clause should be read more narrowly than courts have historically interpreted it.

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment reads: “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.”

Supporters of the executive order contended that children of parents without lawful immigration status do not fall within the clause’s protection, a reading that would have reversed more than a century of settled constitutional interpretation.

The Court’s Ruling

The Supreme Court disagreed. Chief Chief Justice John Roberts authored the opinion, and the decision held that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully present or only temporarily in the country are indeed “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States at birth and therefore entitled to citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The ruling effectively ends the executive order’s central ambition. Because the Court grounded its decision in the constitutional text itself — not merely in statutory interpretation — Congress cannot override the outcome through ordinary legislation; any change would require a constitutional amendment.

What It Means for Idaho

For Idaho’s attorney general, the ruling represents a clear loss on the legal question. The state had invested political capital in the coalition effort, making the announcement on March 31 that Idaho stood with the administration’s constitutional argument. The Court’s majority rejected that argument in full.

The decision is also notable for its author. Chief Chief Justice Roberts is not a reliably progressive vote, and his authorship of the majority opinion signals that the outcome was not a narrow ideological split. The constitutional question appears, for now, to be settled.

Idaho’s participation in the multistate coalition reflects a broader pattern in which Republican attorneys general have used coordinated legal filings to advance the administration’s policy goals through the courts. That strategy has produced some wins in other areas, but birthright citizenship proved to be a different kind of fight — one rooted in constitutional text with a long interpretive history behind it.

What Comes Next

With the Supreme Court having spoken on the constitutional question, the executive order cannot be enforced as written. The administration may explore other immigration enforcement priorities, but altering the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship guarantee would require a path through the amendment process — a threshold no recent political effort has come close to meeting.

Idaho’s attorney general and the other Republican attorneys general in the coalition will need to decide how to characterize the outcome to their constituents heading into fall election cycles. Birthright citizenship had been a high-profile cause, and the Court’s ruling forecloses further litigation on the underlying constitutional question.

For broader context on other state-level political developments in Idaho, including the state’s health department’s pursuit of a $186 million rural infrastructure grant, the post-session political landscape continues to take shape as the 2026 election season accelerates.