WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday it will hear debate next month on Donald Trump’s bid to widely enforce his executive order to limit automatic innate citizenship, a key pillar of the Republican president’s hard-pressed approach to immigration.
The judge did not immediately act on the Trump administration’s request to narrow the scope of three national injunctions issued by federal judges in Washington, Massachusetts and Maryland in the unsigned order.
Instead, the court deferred the decision on the request until it heard the argument in the case set for May 15th.
Trump’s order signed on his first inauguration day, directing federal agencies to refuse to grant citizenship to children born in the United States without at least one parent who is an American citizen or a legal permanent resident.
In a series of lawsuits, plaintiffs, including 22 Democrat Attorney Generals, immigration rights advocates and some pregnant mothers alleged that Trump’s orders were violated rights enshrined in the amendment to the 14th Constitution of the U.S. Constitution, which stipulates that people born in the United States are citizens.
The 14th Amendment citizenship clause states that all “people born or naturalized in the United States or subject to their jurisdiction are citizens of the United States and the state in which they live.”
The administration has long understood that citizenship is granted to virtually anyone born in the United States, the 14th amendment claims it does not extend to illegally immigrants in the country, or to temporary immigrants, such as college students and work visa students, although legal.
The birthright citizenship order “reflects the original meaning, historical understanding and proper scope of the citizenship clause,” wrote Attorney General John Sauer, representing the administration.
Sauer said Universal’s birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and “birth tourism” where people travel to the United States to secure citizenship for their children.
The 1898 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case called US v. Wong Kim Ark Long is interpreted as ensuring that children born in the United States are born to non-citizen parents have the right to American citizenship.
Trump’s Justice Department argued that the court’s ruling would be narrower in that case, and that parents would apply to children who had “permanent US residence and residence.”
Universal injunction
The administration used the legal battle for birthright to tackle the Supreme Court nationwide or “universal” and issued an injunction that federal judges issued obstructive aspects of Trump’s various executive orders to restructure national policies.
A universal injunction could prevent the government from enforcing its policy against anyone, not just the individual plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit to challenge the policy.
Supporters said they were an efficient check on the president’s overreach and were blocking actions deemed illegal by the president of both parties. Critics said they would go beyond the authority of district judges and politicize the judiciary.
In a written submission, Sauer said “a small subset of federal district courts will strike the entire judiciary as the emergence of political activity” and issued 28 national injunctions against the Trump administration in February and March.
The plaintiffs criticized the administration’s focus on the scope of a lower court order, instead of the conclusion that Trump would be in conflict with the constitution.
Washington has called on the Supreme Court to reject the government’s request for “myopia” given Trump’s orders are “severely unconstitutional.”
“Recognizing that citizenship removal orders are impossible to defend merit, the federal government has structured its application as an opportunity to address the acceptability of national injunctions,” the state added.
When urging the court to enforce Trump’s orders against individual plaintiffs who challenged it, Sauer said the state does not have the legal status necessary to assert individual rights under the citizenship clause.
The Washington state lawsuit was filed by Democratic-led states in Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, as well as several pregnant women. Seattle-based US District Judge John Kounoh issued an injunction on February 6th against Trump’s order.
During one hearing in the case, Coughenour, the appointee of former Republican President Ronald Reagan, called Trump’s orders “blatantly unconstitutional.”
On February 19, the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hold off the judge’s injunction.
