FILE-Demonstrators rally in support of birthright citizenship outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on April 1, 2026. (Photo by Kent Nishimura / AFP via Getty Images)
More than half of Americans are not in favor of terminating birthright citizenship as the Supreme Court is poised to issue a ruling on President Donald Trump’s executive order to halt the practice.
The issue of birthright citizenship was one of several questions on the Supreme Court in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online consisting of responses from 4,557 adults living in the U.S.
RELATED: Which countries have birthright citizenship?
Supreme Court justices are expected to rule by the end of June. Conservative and liberal justices questioned whether Trump's order proclaiming that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens coincides with either the Constitution or federal law.
Majority of Americans oppose ending birthright citizenship
Dig deeper:
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted revealed that 64% of Americans don’t support ending birthright citizenship, compared to 32% who favor eliminating it as President Donald Trump ordered in January 2025.
Political parties were divided on the issue, with only 9% of Democrats believing birthright citizenship should be terminated. However, Republicans are split on the matter, with 62% favoring an end to birthright citizenship and 36% supporting keeping it.
And 26% of independents want to end birthright citizenship, compared to 66% who are advocating to keep it.
What is birthright citizenship?
The backstory:
In the U.S., the right to birthright citizenship was enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution after the Civil War, in part to ensure that former slaves would be citizens.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States," the 14th Amendment states.
In the late 1800s, birthright citizenship was legally expanded to the children of immigrants.
According to the Associated Press, President Donald Trump's order would stop the view that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, confirmed in 1868, and federal law since 1940 grant citizenship to everyone born in the U.S., with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.
The 14th Amendment was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship, though the Citizenship Clause is written more broadly.
Several lower courts have struck down Trump’s executive order as illegal, or likely so, under the Constitution and federal law. The AP reported that the decisions have invoked the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which found that the U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.
The Source: Information for this story was provided by Reuters, previous FOX Local reporting, and The Associated Press. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.