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The U.S. Supreme Court, as seen on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman\/States Newsroom)<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Supreme Court Friday in a major decision reined in nationwide injunctions by some lower courts that had blocked President Donald Trump\u2019s executive order barring birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n
The high court declined to decide the constitutionality of birthright citizenship itself. But the justices said\u00a0the Trump executive order<\/a> rewriting the constitutional right to birthright citizenship could go into effect within 30 days after Friday\u2019s ruling in the 28 states that did not initially sue.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court\u2019s\u00a06-3 decision<\/a> thus raises the prospect that a child born in some states would be regarded legally as a U.S. citizen but not in others until the overall question of constitutionality is settled, unless there is further legal action.<\/p>\n The sweeping ruling also likely could hamper other legal challenges against Trump administration actions in which nationwide injunctions are sought. Democratic attorneys general in the states have been successful in obtaining injunctions in the months since Trump was elected.<\/p>\n \u201cGIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court!\u201d Trump wrote on social media shortly after the ruling.<\/p>\n Speaking at the White House later, Trump said his administration will move forward with several executive orders that have faced nationwide injunctions, such as suspending refugee resettlement and revoking federal funds from \u201csanctuary\u201d states and localities.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, including birthright citizenship,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n Liberals on the high court issued a strong dissent. \u201cNo right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,\u201d wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. \u201cToday, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.\u201d<\/p>\n Joining the dissent were Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.<\/p>\n In the ruling, the conservative justices found that nationwide \u201cinjunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Court grants the Government\u2019s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue,\u201d according to the ruling, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.<\/p>\n While the dispute before the court related to Trump\u2019s executive order to rewrite the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, the Trump administration asked the high court to instead focus on\u00a0the issue of preliminary injunctions<\/a> granted by lower courts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe applications do not raise\u2014and thus the Court does not address\u2014the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act,\u201d according to the ruling, referring to the practice of granting citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil.<\/p>\n Attorney General Pam Bondi, who appeared at the White House with the president, predicted the Supreme Court in its new term in October will take up the merits of the executive order that aims to redefine birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n The high court\u2019s ruling instructs lower courts to \u201cmove expeditiously to ensure that, with respect to each plaintiff, the injunctions comport with this rule and otherwise comply with principles of equity.\u201d<\/p>\n In the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, through April 29, judges issued about 25 nationwide injunctions,\u00a0according to the Congressional Research Service.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe lower courts should determine whether a narrower injunction is appropriate; we therefore leave it to them to consider these and any related arguments,\u201d according to the ruling.<\/p>\n A narrower injunction could refer to a class action suit.<\/p>\n Barrett argued that a nationwide injunction would not grant more relief for barring the enforcement of Trump\u2019s executive order against a pregnant person who is not a U.S. citizen and fears their child would be denied citizenship.<\/p>\n \u201cHer child will not be denied citizenship. And extending the injunction to cover everyone similarly situated would not render\u00a0her\u00a0relief any more complete,\u201d according to the ruling. \u201cSo the individual and associational respondents are wrong to characterize the universal injunction as simply an application of the complete-relief principle.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump ran on a reelection campaign platform promising mass deportations of people without permanent legal status and vowed to end the constitutional right of birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n During the press conference at the White House Trump said that birthright citizenship historically was only meant to benefit the children of the newly freed African Americans, not the children of immigrants.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on vacation,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n Under birthright citizenship, all children born in the United States are considered citizens, regardless of their parents\u2019 legal status.<\/p>\n If birthright citizenship were to be eliminated, more than 250,000 children born each year would not be granted U.S. citizenship, according to a recent\u00a0study<\/a> by the think tank the Migration Policy Institute.<\/p>\n It would effectively create a class of 2.7 million stateless people by 2045, according to the study.<\/p>\n In last month\u2019s oral arguments, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who argued on behalf of the Trump administration, contended that it\u2019s unconstitutional for federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions. Instead, he\u00a0said, the injunctions should be limited<\/a> to those who brought the challenges.<\/p>\n New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said during a briefing with reporters that one group of private individuals that challenged the executive order has already filed a class action suit.<\/p>\n \u201cI suspect more will come,\u201d Platkin said.<\/p>\n Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown said at the press conference of Democratic attorneys general that because of Friday\u2019s ruling, the rights of future newborns who hail from states that have not directly challenged the order will be in question.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Washington and New Jersey and Massachusetts, Connecticut, your rights are much more strong, but in all those other states, including many of our neighbor states, not participating in this case is going to have consequences for the children born in those states,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n With 22 states part of the initial suits challenging Trump\u2019s birthright citizenship order included, that means the order could impact the 28 states that were not part of the initial suit.<\/p>\n Those 28 states are: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.<\/p>\n Sotomayor, in her dissent, argued that the Trump administration brought the question of nationwide injunctions before the high court because it would be \u201can impossible task\u201d to prove the constitutionality of the birthright citizenship executive order.<\/p>\n \u201cSo the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone,\u201d she said. \u201cInstead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n Sotomayor also questioned the irreparable harm the Trump administration would face.<\/p>\n \u201cSimply put, it strains credulity to treat the Executive Branch as irreparably harmed by injunctions that direct it to continue following settled law,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She argued that the issue of birthright citizenship was ratified in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in 1868, following the Civil War, to establish citizenship for newly freed Black people. It was meant to rectify a 1857 case in Dred Scott v. Sandford where the Supreme Court initially denied citizenship to Black people, whether they were free or enslaved.<\/p>\n \u201cBy stripping all federal courts, including itself, of that power, the Court kneecaps the Judiciary\u2019s authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies,\u201d Sotomayor said. \u201cThat runs directly counter to the point of equity: empowering courts to do complete justice, including through flexible remedies that have historically benefited parties and nonparties alike.\u201d<\/p>\n The case, Trump v. CASA, was consolidated from three cases.<\/p>\n George Escobar, the chief of programs and services of CASA, which brought the case, said in a statement that the ruling from the high court \u201cundermines the fundamental promise of the Constitution \u2014 that every child born on U.S. soil is equal under the law.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cToday\u2019s decision sends a message to U.S.-born children of immigrants that their place in this country is conditional,\u201d Escobar said. \u201cBut we are not backing down.\u201d<\/p>\n The CASA case was on behalf of several pregnant women in Maryland who are not U.S. citizens who filed their case in Maryland; the second came from four states \u2014 Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon \u2014 that filed a case in Washington state; and the third came from 18 Democratic state attorneys general who filed the challenge in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n Those 18 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. The District of Columbia and the county and city of San Francisco also joined.<\/p>\n This is not the first time the Supreme Court has addressed the issue of birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld the\u00a014th Amendment,<\/a> in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, extending birthright citizenship.<\/p>\nBarrett writes ruling<\/h4>\n
Stateless people<\/h4>\n
\u2018Consequences for the children\u2019<\/h4>\n
\u2018The gamesmanship in this request is apparent\u2019<\/h4>\n
Origins of birthright citizenship case<\/h4>\n