A di­vid­ed U.S. Supreme Court on Tues­day up­held a broad con­cep­tion of birthright cit­i­zen­ship, re­ject­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ex­ec­u­tive or­der de­clar­ing that chil­dren born to peo­ple who are in the Unit­ed States il­le­gal­ly or tem­porar­i­ly are not Amer­i­can cit­i­zens.

By a 6-3 vote, the court struck down Trump’s or­der. A bare ma­jor­i­ty of five jus­tices, in an opin­ion writ­ten by Chief Jus­tice John Roberts, held that the long-set­tled un­der­stand­ing of the 14th Amend­ment, adopt­ed af­ter the Civ­il War, makes a cit­i­zen of any­one born in the coun­try, with very lim­it­ed ex­cep­tions,

“Cit­i­zen­ship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely par­tic­i­pate in our po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. The Framers of the Four­teenth Amend­ment ex­tend­ed that promise to ‘every free-born per­son in this land,’” Chief Jus­tice John Roberts wrote for the court, cit­ing con­gres­sion­al de­bate over the amend­ment, “We keep that promise to­day.”