The historic ruling means children born in the U.S. will continue to be U.S. citizens regardless of their parents' immigration status.
It's a rejection of President Donald Trump's executive order that sought to bar automatic citizenship to any baby born in the U.S. whose parents entered the country illegally or are in the country on a temporary basis.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the 150-year old precedent.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch were the dissenting votes in the decision.
Speaking to "Florida Matters Live & Local," Paul Chavez, an immigration attorney with Americans for Immigrant Justice said the outcome is a relief, but not a surprise.
"The executive order was just so patently unconstitutional. It was a surprise that there was actual dissents," said Chavez. "What the Supreme Court did was defend the soul of the country, in effect, the very definition of what it means to be an American citizen."
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Trump issued the executive order ending birthright citizenship on the first day of his second term, but it never went into effect, as lower courts ruled against it.
Local immigrant advocate Gianny Hunt of Magnified Voices echoed Chavez, saying the outcome on Tuesday feels like a sigh of relief.
"I felt like we were all kind of holding our breath a little bit, and we had been, you know, preparing just in case it wasn't going to go this way," said Hunt.
Non-profits like Magnified Voices, that work directly with immigrant families, have been strained already by increased immigration enforcement.
"We were all preparing ourselves for a bunch of people to be kind of in limbo and wondering how it was going to affect them, especially families that are mixed status," said Hunt.
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If justices ruled in favor of the administration, an estimated 260,000 babies would be born each year to parents who do not have legal status or had some form of temporary legal status, possibly ballooning the unauthorized population.
"I think this decision truly prevented a humanitarian crisis," said Chavez.
But while Chavez and Hunt called the decision a win, they said the work is far from over for groups like theirs.
Another Supreme Court ruling has cleared the way for the Trump administration to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians, and potentially makes it easier to do the same for other nationalities.
More than a million immigrants rely on TPS to live and work in the U.S. legally. Florida is home to the largest population of TPS recipients in the country.
Hunt said the ripple effects of that decision are something they'll be closely watching now.
"On the ground, the community is mostly concerned about immediate immigration policies and what's going on with current tactics," said Hunt.
This story was compiled from interviews conducted by Matthew Peddie for "Florida Matters Live & Local." You can listen to the full interviews here.
