In a series of emergency appeals, President Donald Trump’s administration requested that the Supreme Court permit him to advance with his plans to terminate birthright citizenship, elevating a legal theory that has thus far been rejected by numerous lower courts.
In a series of emergency appeals, the Trump administration asked the justices to limit the impact of the controversial policy, arguing that lower courts had gone too far in issuing nationwide injunctions to block it.
In January, a federal judge blocked the implementation of his executive order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.” Trump’s plan “runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth,” a Maryland judge declared a few days later.
The Trump administration’s request to halt lower court decisions that placed nationwide injunctions on an executive order he signed on the first day of his second term has been dismissed by appeals courts.
Courts have interpreted the 14th Amendment’s language for more than 150 years to ensure citizenship for anyone who is “born or naturalized in the United States,” irrespective of their parents’ immigration status. That interpretation of the law was upheld by a significant Supreme Court decision in 1898, and the current court has shown no intention of changing that decision.
However, because the 14th Amendment states that the benefit is only available to those who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, some conservatives have argued that those long-held beliefs are incorrect. According to the theory, people who enter the country illegally are under the jurisdiction of their home country.
In response to requests from over 20 states, two immigrant rights organizations, and seven individual plaintiffs, courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington have all issued injunctions preventing implementation.
In his appeals to the Supreme Court, Trump is not directly questioning whether the policy is legal or not. Instead, the administration is making what they called a “modest” request to limit the scope of the injunctions.
Still, that is a big ask because if the Supreme Court says yes, the administration will be able to enforce its order against people who aren’t affected by the current lawsuit.
“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” the Justice Department told the Supreme Court in its emergency appeals. “Those universal injunctions prohibit a Day 1 Executive Order from being enforced anywhere in the country, as to ‘hundreds of thousands’ of unspecified individuals who are ‘not before the court nor identified by the court.’”
“During the 20th century,” the administration told the court, “the executive branch adopted the incorrect position that the citizenship clause extended birthright citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States – even children of illegal aliens or temporarily present aliens,” the administration wrote. “That policy of near-universal birthright citizenship has created strong incentives for illegal immigration.”
On Friday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti sent an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court in support of President Donald Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and people who are not citizens.
The brief backs Trump’s request to overturn several nationwide preliminary injunctions issued by federal district courts.
These injunctions have stopped the Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship order from going into effect for now. Skrmetti’s filing says that courts should interpret the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause based on its “original public meaning.”
He also warns against judicial overreach, which he says upsets the balance of powers in the Constitution.
“Courts are empowered by the Constitution to resolve cases and controversies, not to issue sweeping policy proclamations or manage the executive branch,” Attorney General Skrmetti said in a statement. “Undermining the sovereignty of the American people through judicial overreach threatens to alienate the people from our constitutional system and thereby cause grievous harm to liberty and public order.”
In his 25-page brief, Skrmetti stresses the need for judges to be careful and asks the Supreme Court to clarify the Citizenship Clause for the first time in modern times. He uses historical records from the time of Reconstruction to show that the people who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment did not mean for children of foreigners living in the U.S. illegally to become citizens.
Skrmetti also didn’t like how lower courts have been issuing more and more nationwide injunctions lately. These, he said, interfere with the separation of powers and make broad national policies from the bench. He talked about how court-ordered policies had hurt Tennessee and other states in the past, especially when it came to immigration and education.
Rising immigration levels have strained resources and increased public safety concerns in Tennessee and other interior states, according to the brief.
Citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Skrmetti notes that more than nine million illegal immigrants have entered the country in recent years, with many settling in non-border states.
Skrmetti contends that these trends are not only untenable but also intensified by an expansive interpretation of the Citizenship Clause, which fosters incentives for unlawful border crossings.
