Trump Turns to Supreme Court on Birthright Citizenship Curbs (2)

President Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court to let him partially enforce his executive order seeking to restrict automatic birthright citizenship, pulling the court into his drive to upend a longstanding constitutional right.

In a set of emergency filings, the administration said the justices should limit the reach of three federal court rulings that blocked the initiative nationwide. Acting US Solicitor General Sarah Harris said the rulings should apply only to the people and groups that sued, letting the administration press ahead with its planned new policy more broadly.

The executive order would jettison what until recently was the widespread understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone born on US soil. Trump would restrict that to babies with at least one parent who is a US citizen or green card holder, meaning that even the newborn children of people legally in the country on temporary visas wouldn’t become Americans.

The filings don’t ask the court to directly consider the constitutionality of the Jan. 20 executive action, focusing instead on an increasingly important procedural question: the power of judges to issue so-called universal injunctions. Administrations from both parties have chafed at universal injunctions, arguing that a single judge generally shouldn’t have the power to block a federal government policy nationwide.

“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” Harris said in the filings, which stemmed from cases in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state. “That sharp rise in universal injunctions stops the executive branch from performing its constitutional functions before any courts fully examine the merits of those actions.”

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 immigrants to attend public school. Congress has enacted similar guarantees by statute.

More than 20 states are suing Trump along with a handful of immigrant-rights organizations and individuals. In each case, a federal appeals court refused to intervene after a trial judge blocked the executive order.

“The president’s novel interpretation of the Citizenship Clause contradicts the plain language of the 14th Amendment and conflicts with 125-year-old binding Supreme Court precedent,” US District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote in the Maryland case in a Feb. 5 ruling.

As part of her filing, Harris contends the states lacked the legal “standing” to sue, arguing that “states (like other litigants) may assert only their own rights, not the rights of third parties.”

She said the court at a minimum should let federal agencies issue guidance explaining how they would implement the executive order should it take effect.

Various Supreme Court justices have expressed misgivings about universal injunctions in at least some contexts. The high court cut back one such injunction last year when it let Idaho broadly enforce its ban on certain medical treatments for transgender minors, limiting a trial judge’s ruling against the state so that the decision allowed treatment only for two teenage girls who sued to challenge the ban.

The cases are Trump v. CASA, 24a884; Trump v. Washington, 24a885; and Trump v. New Jersey, 24a886.

(Updates with details from filings.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth

© 2025 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Used with permission.