The US Supreme Court said it will hear arguments on President
The court said Thursday it will keep a pause on Trump’s restrictions – which would mean babies born in the US wouldn’t become citizens unless at least one parent is a citizen or green card holder – in advance of the special May 15 argument session.
The case won’t directly concern the validity of the new restrictions and will instead center on Trump’s request to narrow three rulings that blocked implementation of the policy nationwide while litigation goes forward.
Trump and the Justice Department are asking the high court to limit those rulings to particular people connected to the cases, or to the states and other jurisdictions that sued.
The case will test so-called universal injunctions that broadly thwart White House policies via a single lawsuit. The Justice Department told the high court those types of orders “have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration.”
Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 that seeks to jettison what has been the widespread understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone born on US soil.
Trump’s restrictions would mean that even the newborn children of people legally in the country on temporary visas wouldn’t become Americans. The executive order tells federal agencies not to issue citizenship-based documents — including Social Security cards and passports — to babies who don’t meet the new criteria.
Longtime Understanding
The court’s one-page order Thursday contained no explanation or indication that justices cast a vote on the decision to hold arguments. The court is likely to rule by late June or early July. The May 15 argument is an unusual one for the court, which typically hears its last cases of a term in late April.
Trump’s executive order is being challenged by immigrant-rights organizations, affected individuals and 22 Democratic-run states plus the District of Columbia. In each case, a federal appeals court refused to intervene after a trial judge blocked the executive order nationwide.
A group of states led by New Jersey said the administration was making “a remarkable request” that would “strip thousands of American-born children of their citizenship, in every state or at least in 28 states, while these challenges proceed — even if doing so would contravene settled nationwide precedent.”
In urging the court to scale back the injunctions, Justice Department lawyers argue that federal judges generally must limit their orders to the parties in the lawsuit. Administrations from both parties have chafed at universal injunctions.
“Universal injunctions transgress constitutional limits on courts’ powers, which extend only to ‘rendering a judgment or decree upon the rights of the litigants,’” the Justice Department argued, quoting from a 2023 opinion written by Justice
The administration also contends the states and other jurisdictions lacked legal standing to help press the cases. The administration didn’t ask the court to directly consider the constitutionality of the president’s executive order.
Trump said Thursday that birthright citizenship was originally intended to benefit freed former slaves in the aftermath of the Civil War, and not the children of non-citizens in the country.
“It’s all about slavery, and if you look at it that way, we should win that case,” Trump said. He said he was “so happy” the Supreme Court had intervened.
Critics say Trump is trying to unilaterally overturn part of the 14th Amendment, which confers citizenship on anyone who is born in the US and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
The Supreme Court said in 1898 that the provision covered a man born in California to two Chinese parents, and the court reinforced that decision in a 1982 ruling backing the right of undocumented immigrant children to attend public school. Congress has enacted similar guarantees by statute.
“Birthright citizenship is at the core of our nation’s foundational precept that all people born on our soil are created equal, regardless of their parentage,” the immigrant-rights groups CASA, Inc. and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project argued in court papers.
Explainer:
The cases are Trump v. CASA, 24a884; Trump v. Washington, 24a885; and Trump v. New Jersey, 24a886.
(Updates with Trump reaction in 14th and 15th paragraphs.)
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Steve Stroth
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