A deadline passed quietly Monday night with no action from the Trump administration, which failed to submit a petition for rehearing in the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship case by the July 27 cutoff — despite President Donald Trump having pledged publicly to do exactly that. The court's electronic docket showed no filing before the window closed, as NBC News and SCOTUSblog confirmed.
Under Supreme Court rules, a rehearing petition was due 25 days after the June 30 ruling. Because that deadline landed on Saturday, July 25, it rolled to the next business day, Monday, July 27. Even had Trump filed, court rules require a majority of justICEs to grant rehearing, and the petition must be championed by at least one justice who concurred in the original judgment — meaning Trump would have needed five votes, including at least one from a justice who voted against his order.
The June 30 decision went against Trump 6-3. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, holding that Trump's executive order conflicted with the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, which guarantees citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. Justice Brett Kavanaugh reached the same bottom line through a separate rationale, finding the order ran afoul of a federal statute whose language closely mirrors that constitutional provision. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented and would have let the order take effect.
Trump had announced on Truth Social on July 8 that he would "immediately" seek rehearing, describing the court's ruling as "a miscarriage of justice" that would "destroy America" if left intact. Neither the White House nor the Justice Department answered repeated requests for comment, NBC News reported.
The executive order at the center of the dispute, signed January 20, 2025, the day of Trump's second inauguration, would have denied automatic citizenship to children born on U.S. soil unless at least one parent held citizenship or permanent resident status. Babies born to people in the country illegally or on temporary visas would have been excluded.
The litigation, known as Trump v. Barbara, drew immediate legal challenges from states, immigrants' rights organizations, and private individuals, all of whom persuaded federal courts that the order was unconstitutional. The administration initially brought the matter to the Supreme Court seeking a ruling on whether federal judges may issue universal injunctions; on June 27, 2025, the court held 6-3 that they cannot. Litigation then resumed in the lower courts, and on December 5, 2025, the justices agreed to take up a New Hampshire federal judge's ruling striking down the order — ultimately producing the June 30 decision.
Legal scholars say the odds of success through rehearing would have been long regardless. As law professor Stephen Vladeck observed, the Supreme Court has not agreed to reconsider a fully argued case since 1965, when it modified a judgment to allow unresolved issues to proceed in the lower courts. A full reversal on the merits via rehearing has not occurred since 1956.
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