President Donald Trump‘s administration asked the Supreme Court in three emergency petitions to allow him to press forward with ending birthright citizenship, elevating the dispute over one of his most controversial executive orders to the nine justices.
“Three district courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington have issued overlapping nationwide injunctions at the behest of 22 States, two organizations, and seven individuals,” according to one of the petitions authored by acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris. She added that the decisions cover all 50 states and “millions of aliens across the country.”
In the trio of appeals, the Department of Justice aired its frustration about lower courts stalling Trump’s agenda on a national scale. Harris argued lower courts mishandled previous rulings that involved nationwide “universal” injunctions blocking the policy, asking the justices to limit those orders.
“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current Administration,” the application states.
So far, at least four lower courts have stalled the birthright order across the nation.
“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,'” DOJ lawyers added.
The lawsuits against the Trump birthright order have been targeted by plaintiffs such as pregnant women who say their children’s ability to be born as natural citizens is jeopardized by the initiative, arguing it violates over 140 years of understanding of the 14th Amendment’s text that guarantees citizenship to anyone “born or naturalized in the United States.”
So far, at least four lower courts have stalled the birthright order across the nation.
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But some conservative legal scholars have argued that the 14th Amendment’s text implies that citizenship applies only if at least one parent is a citizen or has been naturalized in the country, arguing that the status quo has been used to promote “birth tourism” or “anchor babies” by parents who are otherwise illegally present in the nation.
“During the 20th century,” Harris wrote, “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.”
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While the lawsuits against the initiative are still in early stages, the emergency request will once again put the justices in the limelight on what is arguably among Trump’s most aggressive policy efforts since he took office in January.
Last week, Trump’s staunch supporters and allies erupted in online protest and dissent after the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision in which Republican appointees Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the liberals, upheld a lower court judge’s decision to force the government to press forward on $2 billion in foreign aid spending.
