The Supreme Court closed its latest term with a set of major civil rights rulings that left constitutional birthright citizenship intact while narrowing legal tools used by immigrants, voters of color, and transgender students to challenge government action.
The term ended with two high-profile decisions on June 30. In one, the court rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present. In another, it upheld state laws in West Virginia and Idaho that bar transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s school sports teams.
Those rulings came days after the court allowed the federal government to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants while litigation continues. They also followed an April voting-rights decision that civil rights advocates say will make it far harder to use Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to protect minority voters from discriminatory maps.
Taken together, the cases show a court that preserved one central guarantee of the 14th Amendment while cutting back other routes for enforcing equality, political representation, and protection from discrimination.
The birthright citizenship ruling in Trump v. Barbara was the clearest defeat for the Trump administration’s civil rights agenda. The court held 6-3 that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment.
Trump issued Executive Order No. 14160 on his first day back in office in 2025. The order said children born in the United States to parents who were unlawfully or temporarily present were not entitled to citizenship under the Constitution or the Immigration and Nationality Act. Parents sued on behalf of themselves and their children, arguing that the order violated both the 14th Amendment and federal law.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. He traced the Citizenship Clause through English common law, Reconstruction, and the Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The court held that birth on U.S. soil remains the constitutional rule, with narrow exceptions for children of foreign diplomats, children born to enemy forces in hostile occupation, and historical treatment of tribal nations.
The ruling was a major setback for Trump’s effort to rewrite one of the country’s most settled citizenship guarantees through executive action. It also carried direct stakes for families whose children could have been denied recognition as citizens at birth, including access to passports, Social Security numbers, public benefits, school enrollment, and legal protection from deportation.
But the court’s citizenship ruling did not signal a term of broad civil rights protection.
In Mullin v. Doe, decided June 25, the court allowed the government to end TPS protections for immigrants from Haiti and Syria while legal challenges continue. TPS protects people already in the United States when their home countries are too dangerous for return because of war, natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. The affected communities include Haitians and Syrians who fled violence, instability, and disaster and built lives in the United States under federal protection.
The challengers argued that the Trump administration’s decision was legally flawed and tainted by racial animus. The court acknowledged that lower courts had found the challengers likely to succeed on claims tied to agency decision-making and equal protection, including allegations involving statements by Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. But the majority held that the challengers were not entitled to court orders postponing the TPS terminations during the litigation.
That decision did not finally resolve the underlying discrimination claims. It did, however, allow the government’s termination policy to move forward while people who had relied on TPS face the risk of losing work authorization, legal protection, and family stability before the courts reach a final judgment.
The June 30 transgender sports ruling added another loss for transgender-rights plaintiffs. In West Virginia v. B. P. J. and Little v. Hecox, the court upheld laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prohibit transgender girls and women from competing on girls’ and women’s teams in public schools and colleges.
The students challenging the laws argued that the bans violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The court rejected those claims, holding that Title IX does not require schools to allow transgender girls and women on female teams and that the state laws did not violate equal protection.
The decision gives states more legal room to exclude transgender students from school sports, even when individual students have complied with school rules, medical treatment standards, and years of litigation. It also gives lower courts a new framework likely to affect challenges to similar laws across the country.
For transgender students, the ruling turns a national political fight into school-level exclusion. The practical effect is felt not in legal theory, but in access to teams, scholarships, peer belonging, and equal treatment in public education.
The court’s term also carried major voting-rights consequences. In Louisiana v. Callais, decided April 29, the court addressed Louisiana’s congressional map and the tension between racial gerrymandering doctrine and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Civil rights plaintiffs had argued that Louisiana’s prior map diluted Black voting power and that a second majority-Black district was needed. The court’s conservative majority took a narrow view of how race may be used in drawing districts, even when race and party preference are closely linked.
The Associated Press reported that the ruling gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act meant to remedy minority voter disenfranchisement. Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent warned that the decision would leave minority voters with fewer tools to challenge maps in places with racially polarized voting and residential segregation.
The ruling matters beyond Louisiana. Redistricting decisions determine whether communities can elect candidates of their choice, whether Black voters are split across districts, and whether legislatures can defend maps that weaken minority voting power by calling them partisan rather than racial.
That distinction has become one of the most powerful tools in modern redistricting fights. If courts accept that racial outcomes can be treated as partisan outcomes, states may have greater freedom to draw maps that reduce the power of voters of color while avoiding liability under federal voting-rights law.
The term’s civil rights record is not a single story of wins or losses. It is a map of where the court is drawing the lines. Birthright citizenship survived. TPS holders lost interim protection. Transgender students lost major Title IX and equal protection claims. Minority voters face a narrowed path under the Voting Rights Act.
For civil rights advocates, the pattern is less about any one case than about the shrinking role of federal courts in remedying discrimination. The court remains willing to preserve a constitutional rule as old and settled as birthright citizenship, but it is increasingly skeptical of legal claims that ask judges to account for race, identity, inequality, and structural barriers in government policy.
The result is a legal landscape in which some rights remain formally recognized while the tools to enforce them become harder to use. Immigrant families, Black voters, transgender students, and people facing discriminatory state action may still bring claims, but this term signals that fewer of those claims will succeed at the nation’s highest court.
Kristen Clarke, general counsel for the NAACP and former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, told The Associated Press: “This term, we saw a Supreme Court that is moving quickly to eradicate legal protections in ways that will leave vulnerable communities exposed to the harsh winds of discrimination and hatred that we continue to see across the country today.”
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