- The judges end their nine-month term with three important rulings.
- Court allows state bans on transgender student athletes.
- He backs the Republican challenge to campaign spending cuts.
The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a tough defeat Tuesday by rejecting his move to restrict birthright citizenship on the final day of his momentous term, while allowing states to ban transgender student-athletes from women’s sports teams and remove more limits on campaign finance.
The nine-month annual term of America’s highest judicial body was filled with major rulings, including some big wins for Trump in areas such as presidential powers and immigration, as well as losses for him on tariffs, the firing of a Federal Reserve official and, on Tuesday, birthright citizenship.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority that includes three Trump appointees.
Limiting birthright citizenship was a top priority in the Republican president’s crackdown on immigration, so much so that he signed an executive order on the issue on his first day back in office last year.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored Tuesday’s 6-3 decision, said Trump’s directive violated the language of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guarantees citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States, with some narrow exceptions.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights, to participate freely in our political community,” Roberts wrote, adding that the framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in the country.
“We delivered on that promise today,” Roberts wrote.
Trump’s directive instructed federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither parent is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a “green card” holder. Critics have accused Trump of racial and religious discrimination in his approach to immigration.
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 following the Civil War that ended slavery in the United States, confers citizenship on those born in the United States who are “subject to its jurisdiction.” There were narrow exceptions, such as the children of foreign diplomats or members of an enemy occupying force.
Before the ruling, some experts had estimated that Trump’s directive could affect the legal status of up to 250,000 babies born each year and could require the families of millions more to prove the citizenship status of their newborns.
Transgender sports
The controversy over transgender athletes has become entangled in the American culture wars.
Laws in West Virginia and Idaho designate sports teams in public schools, including universities, by “biological sex” and exclude “male students” from women’s teams. The states said the laws preserve fair and safe competition for women and girls. Twenty-five other states have similar laws.
Critics saw the measures as part of a broader attack on the rights of transgender Americans by Trump and several states.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned lower court decisions that sided with transgender students and challenged the bans in the two states as violating the Constitution and a federal anti-discrimination law.
The court decided 9-0 that the state laws do not violate the Title IX civil rights statute that prohibits discrimination in education “on the basis of sex.”
The justices divided along ideological lines (the six conservative justices are in the majority) in ruling that the measures also do not violate the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.
“Pursuant to Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that states may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological women. They may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex. The Constitution and Title IX do not require a review of women’s and girls’ sports throughout the United States,” conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the ruling.
It was the court’s second major ruling against transgender plaintiffs within a year. In a Tennessee case in June 2025, it allowed states to ban gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors.
Campaign financing
The court has ruled against several campaign finance restrictions since 2010. On Tuesday, it sided with Republican opponents, including Vice President JD Vance, of federal limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates, as major Republican committees head into November’s midterm elections with a significant monetary lead over their Democratic counterparts.
The ruling was 6-3, driven by conservative judges. The court found that the current limit on the amount of money parties can spend on campaigns with contributions from candidates violated the Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government restriction of free speech.
A consistent term
The court issued numerous important rulings during its tenure.
In February, he rejected Trump’s sweeping global tariffs imposed under a law intended for national emergencies.
On Monday, he endorsed Trump’s firing of a member of the Federal Trade Commission, expanding his powers over the government while overturning a 1935 precedent that had long restricted presidents’ ability to fire independent agency officials. But it also refused in a separate case to allow him to immediately fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
In April, the court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in a victory for Republicans. This month, he allowed the Trump administration to rescind a humanitarian status that protected hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants from deportation, and sided with them on asylum seekers.
The court further expanded gun rights this month. It repealed a Hawaii law that restricted the carrying of firearms on private property open to the public, like most businesses, without the owner’s permission. It also limited the application of a US law that prohibits the possession of firearms by certain drug users.
