Demonstrators rally in support of birthright citizenship outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mehmet Eser/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The window for the Trump administration to petition the nation’s highest court to reconsider its ruling on birthright citizenship closed this week with no apparent action by the White House or the Justice Department.
Timeline:
Shortly after the Supreme Court struck down the executive order, which would deny citizenship to children born in the United States to parents in the country illegally or temporarily, President Donald Trump declared he wanted the justices to reconsider their decision.
Trump took to social media a week after the June verdict to say he would "be asking for a Rehearing by the United States Supreme Court, IMMEDIATELY."
The clock began when the court handed down its verdict, and the Trump administration had 25 days to ask the court for a second chance. The clock ran out on Tuesday, with no new filing on the docket.
The backstory:
The birthright citizenship order was a signature issue for the Trump administration and one so important to the president that he showed up at the court on the day arguments were heard.
By a 6-3 margin, the justices struck down the order, with five of the six justices determining that it was unconstitutional. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who had joined the majority opinion in part, wrote that he did not believe the order violated the Constitution, but it did violate the law.
The Trump administration had seized on Kavanaugh’s argument as a potential path forward, seeing a chance to accomplish the order’s aim through congressional, rather than executive, action.
RELATED: Which countries have birthright citizenship?
Dig deeper:
Any petition for the high court to change its opinion faces a steep uphill climb. The justices have not accepted one in more than 50 years. The last time they did so was in 1965 for a case that had been decided nearly a decade earlier, William & Mary Law School professor Aaron-Andrew Bruhl told the Associated Press.
Bruhl explained that for the court to agree to take up the case again, one of the justices in the majority would have to have changed their mind, and the majority of the court would have to agree to hear it.
The Source: Information for this article was taken from the Associated Press and previous coverage. This story was reported from Orlando.