US Supreme Court to Rule on Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order

By Staff, Agencies

The US supreme court agreed on Friday to decide the legality of Donald Trump’s order to heavily restrict the right to birthright citizenship, the long-held constitutional principle that individuals born on US soil are automatically United States citizens.

The justices will hear the president’s request to uphold his executive order on birthright citizenship, issued just hours after Trump took office for his second term and immediately blocked from taking effect.

The order was a contentious part of the administration’s far-reaching immigration crackdown – and a step that would transform the interpretation of a 19th-century constitutional provision.

Multiple judges across the country filed injunctions blocking the order, finding it violates or probably violates the constitution, federal statute and US supreme court precedent.

Trump then took to the supreme court to fight the injunctions. In a major decision in June, the court ruled that lower courts were exceeding their given authority by issuing injunctions that became effective nationally. But it did not address the legality of the birthright citizenship ban itself.

The justices on Friday announced they would take up a justice department appeal of a lower court’s ruling that blocked Trump’s executive order telling US government agencies not to recognize citizenship of children born in the US if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident.

The lower court ruled that Trump’s policy violated the constitution’s 14th amendment and a federal law codifying birthright citizenship right in a class-action lawsuit by parents and children whose citizenship is threatened by the directive.

The case, Trump v Barbara, will be argued in the spring, with a ruling expected by early summer. The Barbara case comes from New Hampshire, where a federal judge in July blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit led by the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] on behalf of children and their parents who would be affected by Trump’s order.

Cecillia Wang of the ACLU argued that "no president can change the 14th Amendment’s fundamental promise of citizenship." She noted that for over 150 years, anyone born on US soil is a citizen, and federal courts have ruled Trump’s executive order unconstitutional. Wang is confident the Supreme Court will resolve the issue this term.

Trump has challenged the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship for US-born babies, a provision ratified after the Civil War to secure citizenship for freed Black Americans. The amendment states that anyone born in the US is a citizen.

Trump adopted a fringe theory, claiming the 14th Amendment encourages illegal immigration.

“The citizenship clause of the [14th] Amendment was adopted to grant citizenship to newly freed slaves and their children – not to the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens,” John Sauer, the US solicitor general, wrote in urging the high court to consider the case.

If allowed to take effect, Trump’s order would deny automatic citizenship to US-born children of undocumented or temporarily legal immigrants, like those on student or work visas.

If allowed to stand, If upheld, Trump’s order would strip US citizenship from tens of thousands of newborns annually, making them ineligible for key government programs like food aid, subsidized health insurance, and Medicaid for intensive care.

The US is among roughly 30 countries, including Canada and Mexico, that grant automatic citizenship to nearly all people born on their soil.