Supreme Court agrees to decide constitutionality of Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship
Washington (CBS NEWS) — Sources from CBS say the Supreme Court said Friday it will decide the legality of President Trump’s executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship, which automatically grants citizenship to anyone born in the U.S.
Issued at the start of his second term, the plan is the first from Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda that the Supreme Court will evaluate on the legal merits. The justices have been asked to intervene in several challenges to Mr. Trump’s immigration policies, but did so at early stages of the cases and through emergency requests for relief.
No lower court that has been confronted with legal challenges to the birthright citizenship order has embraced the Trump administration’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. Still, the Justice Department has argued that those decisions are wrong, claiming that the Constitution does not grant citizenship to the children of “temporary visitors or illegal aliens.”
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the plaintiffs in the case, said, “No president can change the 14th Amendment’s fundamental promise of citizenship.”
“For over 150 years, it has been the law and our national tradition that everyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen from birth. The federal courts have unanimously held that President Trump’s executive order is contrary to the Constitution, a Supreme Court decision from 1898, and a law enacted by Congress,” Wang said in a statement. “We look forward to putting this issue to rest once and for all in the Supreme Court this term.”
Mr. Trump issued his executive order on birthright citizenship on his first day back in the White House. Under the plan, children born in the U.S. to parents who are either in the country illegally or on a temporary basis are not recognized as U.S. citizens.
The president’s directive sought to reverse more than a century of understanding that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil, with exceptions for children born to diplomats and foreign military forces. The Supreme Court addressed the issue 127 years ago, ruling in 1898 that the Citizenship Clause ties U.S. citizenship to place of birth.
Mr. Trump’s executive order is a pillar of his immigration agenda, but it has yet to take effect. The policy faced a slew of legal challenges soon after it was issued, and lower courts uniformly blocked its implementation. Then, the Supreme Court agreed to intervene during the early stages of three different cases, but did not consider the underlying legality of Mr. Trump’s proposal.
Instead, the issue before the justices was the scope of relief granted by lower courts hearing the birthright citizenship cases, which had issued nationwide injunctions preventing the administration from enforcing the policy. The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, curtailed the ability of district court judges to issue those universal orders, but said plaintiffs could seek broad relief through class-action lawsuits. It also left open the possibility that states could secure nationwide relief.
On the heels of that ruling, two babies subject to Mr. Trump’s order and their parents, as well as a pregnant woman, filed a lawsuit challenging the birthright citizenship order on behalf of a putative nationwide class. A federal district court in New Hampshire certified as a provisional class all babies who would be denied birthright citizenship by the president’s plan and found that the order likely violates the Constitution.
The district court barred the Trump administration from enforcing the plan against all impacted by it.
The Supreme Court is taking up the case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit has weighed in.
It did not act on another appeal involving four states, Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, that had been before the high court in a preliminary posture. In July, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that Mr. Trump’s executive order was invalid because it contradicts the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to all born in the U.S.
The 9th Circuit split 2-1 to leave in place a nationwide injunction that had been issued by a district court in February, finding it was necessary to give the states complete relief.
The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to take up both cases and issue a final decision on whether Mr. Trump’s executive order is constitutionally sound. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said it’s a “mistaken view” that birth on U.S. soil confers citizenship, and said that understanding has had “destructive consequences.”
But the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the plaintiffs in the New Hampshire case, argued that the Trump administration is effectively asking the Supreme Court to “rewrite” the Citizenship Clause and unwind more than a century of the nation’s “everyday practice.”
Arguments in the case are expected to take place next year, with a decision likely issued by the end of June or early July.
