The nation's highest court has decided to review legal challenge disputing citizenship by birth.
The US Supreme Court has will hear a landmark case that challenges a historic principle: guaranteed citizenship for those born in the United States.
On the inaugural day in office this January, President Donald Trump enacted a directive aiming to terminate the policy, but the move was subsequently blocked by lower courts after constitutional questions were brought forward.
The Supreme Court's final ruling will ultimately support citizenship rights for the infants of migrants who are in the US illegally or on temporary visas, or it will nullify those rights completely.
Next, the justices will calendar a session to hear the case between the administration and plaintiffs, which include parents who are immigrants and their newborns.
The Legal Foundation
For more than 150 years, the Fourteenth Amendment has established the principle that all individuals born in the nation is a citizen, with certain exclusions for children born to diplomats and personnel of occupying armies.
"Every individual born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
The contested executive order sought to withhold citizenship to the offspring of people who are either in the US illegally or are in the country on temporary visas.
The United States is among about a minority of states – primarily in the Americas – that grant automatic citizenship to all those born within their borders.
