Immigrant groups and leaders of 22 Democratic-led states pushed back sharply on Friday against the Trump administration’s request that the Supreme Court lift a temporary nationwide ban blocking the president’s order to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and foreign residents.
The filings in a trio of emergency applications came in response to the Trump administration’s emergency applications to the court in March, when the government asked the justices to step in and lift the block imposed by lower courts.
On his first day in office, President Trump declared that citizenship would be denied to babies who do not have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. That would include children born to people who crossed into the country without permission.
A brief filed by the immigrant advocacy groups said Mr. Trump had tried to end birthright citizenship by “executive fiat.” “But 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 brief said.
Three federal courts, in Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington State, have blocked the order while litigation proceeds.
The birthright citizenship case is one of a number of legal battles around Trump administration policies before the justices. The court has also been asked to weigh in on the government’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport more than 100 Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador, as well as the cancellation of millions of dollars in teacher-training grants that it contends would promote diversity, equity and inclusion, and the firing of federal workers.
The administration framed its request about birthright citizenship as “modest.” Rather than address the substance of the policy — the legality of curbing birthright citizenship — the government lawyers have asked the court to weigh in on a long-simmering debate about a tool used by federal judges, the nationwide injunction. Such injunctions enable a federal judge to temporarily freeze a policy across the country, rather than limiting a pause to the parties involved. They have been used during Democratic and Republican administrations.
Some legal experts say the courts could be overwhelmed if federal judges could no longer temporarily pause a policy nationwide while litigation proceeded. But critics of their use argue that the broad sweep of such measures have led to more politicization of the courts because judges issue emergency rulings before the merits of cases have been heard.
The curbs on birthright citizenship are among a series of Trump administration policy moves that have been blocked nationally by judges who have issued temporary pauses while suits challenging their legality are considered.
In their briefs, the challengers argued the birthright citizenship issue illustrates why the tool is needed.
“There is nothing ‘modest’ about the government’s request for emergency relief in this case,” according to the brief filed on behalf of two immigrants’ rights groups, CASA Inc. and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project. If the justices granted the government’s request, the challengers argued, “chaos would ensue.”
A brief from a number of attorneys general of Democratic-led states called the request by the Trump administration “remarkable,” adding that lifting the nationwide block would allow the administration “to 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.”
