US Supreme Court has decided to consider legal challenge disputing citizenship by birth.

The nation's highest court has will hear a landmark case that challenges a historic constitutional right: guaranteed citizenship for people born in the United States.

On his first day in office this January, the administration enacted a directive aiming to end this practice, but the action was halted by lower courts after constitutional questions were filed.

The Supreme Court's final ruling will ultimately affirm citizenship rights for the infants of migrants who are in the US undocumented or on non-immigrant visas, or it will end those rights entirely.

Next, the court will set a time to hear oral arguments between the administration and claimants, which involve foreign-born parents and their young children.

The Legal Foundation

For more than 150 years, the Fourteenth Amendment has established the principle that all individuals born in the nation is a US citizen, with specific conditions for children born to diplomats and members of occupying armies.

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

The challenged directive sought to deny citizenship to the offspring of people who are either in the US illegally or are in the country on non-permanent visas.

The United States is one of about a minority of states – primarily in the Americas – that grant immediate citizenship to anyone born within their borders.