The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will hear oral arguments early next year in the challenge to President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship — the longstanding rule that nearly all individuals born on U.S. soil automatically acquire citizenship.

The order, which has not taken effect, would deny automatic citizenship to people born in the United States if their parents are in the country illegally or on a temporary basis.

Challengers argue that the directive violates both the text of the Constitution and established Supreme Court precedent, SCOTUSBlog reported.

The decision to take up the case was included in a brief list of orders released after the justices’ private conference. The Court will issue another list on Monday detailing which petitions from that conference it has declined to review.

Roughly 30 countries, including Canada and Mexico, grant automatic citizenship to nearly all people born within their borders. The United States adopted birthright citizenship in 1868 with the ratification of the 14th Amendment following the Civil War. The amendment’s Citizenship Clause states: “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.”

Its adoption overturned the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling, which held that Black Americans could not be U.S. citizens.

The Supreme Court most directly addressed birthright citizenship in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. In a 6–2 decision, the Court held that Wong, who was born in California to Chinese noncitizen parents, was a U.S. citizen.

Justice Horace Gray wrote that the 14th Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory,” applying even to children of resident aliens. In dissent, Chief Justice Melville Fuller argued that Wong was not fully “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States because his parents owed allegiance to China and were barred under federal law from naturalizing.

Meanwhile, Trump’s executive order quickly prompted legal challenges, which no doubt the president expected and perhaps even sought.

In Seattle, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing the order, while a separate federal judge in Maryland also issued an injunction as a lawsuit brought by immigrant-rights organizations and several pregnant women proceeds.

Meanwhile, for more than a century, independent federal agencies have overseen areas such as monetary policy, securities regulation, transportation, elections, consumer safety and broadcast licensing without direct political control from the White House. These structures were designed by Congress to promote bipartisan oversight and policy stability across administrations.

A major Supreme Court case set for oral argument on Monday could reshape that system. The challenge centers on President Donald Trump’s effort to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, on the grounds that her continued service is “inconsistent with the administration’s priorities.”

Slaughter was appointed in 2023 to a seven-year term intended to insulate the commission from political swings.

The Court’s ruling could determine whether presidents, as head of the Executive Branch, have broad authority to dismiss members of Executive Branch agencies — a decision with sweeping implications for how the federal government operates, ABC News reported.

Lower courts have ruled that President Trump’s attempt to remove Slaughter was unlawful, noting that federal law permits the dismissal of an FTC commissioner only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Congress established those for-cause protections to shield the commission from direct political influence.

The Trump administration contends that such limits on removal are unconstitutional, arguing that the president must have full authority over the leadership of executive-branch agencies that implement policy and enforce federal regulations, ABC News noted.

“If he prevails, presidents could win unfettered power to terminate members of independent agencies at-will, which in turn could mark the end of their independence,” the outlet added.