The nation's highest court agrees to review lawsuit challenging citizenship by birth.

The top court has decided to review a pivotal case that challenges a longstanding guarantee: guaranteed citizenship for people born on American soil.

On the inaugural day in office this winter, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aiming to halt this practice, but the order was subsequently blocked by the judiciary after legal challenges were initiated.

The Supreme Court's eventual ruling will either support citizenship rights for the offspring of foreign nationals who are in the US illegally or on temporary visas, or it will end those rights entirely.

Next, the justices will schedule a date to hear oral arguments between the government and claimants, which involve parents who are immigrants and their young children.

The 14th Amendment

For over a century and a half, the Fourteenth Amendment has established the principle that every person born in the nation is a US citizen, with exceptions for children born to diplomats and personnel of occupying armies.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

The challenged presidential order sought to refuse citizenship to the offspring of people who are either in the US in violation of immigration law or are in the country on non-permanent visas.

The United States is among about a minority of states – largely in the Western Hemisphere – that grant automatic citizenship to all those born in their territory.