Trump Administration Asks the Supreme Court to Intervene on Rulings to Do With Birthright Citizenship
President Donald Trump and his administration are having a rather busy few dates with the courts, as Townhall has been covering. On Thursday, the administration made a request for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene on the issue of birthright citizenship. Not long after he took office for his second term, Trump signed an executive order ending birthright citizenship. Immediately, lawsuits quickly came, and multiple judges have already ruled against the president.
According to Fox News:
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to intervene and allow a narrow version of his executive order banning birthright citizenship to move forward, challenging three nationwide injunctions brought in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state.
Judges in those states immediately moved to block President Donald Trump’s order banning birthright citizenship, which he signed on his first day in office.
All three courts blocked the ruling nationwide – something lawyers for the Trump administration argued in their Supreme Court filing is overly broad.
In the court filing Thursday, acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris said the courts had gone too far, and asked the Supreme Court justices to limit the scope of the rulings to cover only individuals directly impacted by the relevant courts.
“These cases – which involve challenges to the President’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order concerning birthright citizenship – raise important constitutional questions with major ramifications for securing the border,” Harris wrote.
“But at this stage, the government comes to this Court with a ‘modest’ request: while the parties litigate weighty merits questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purpor[t] to cover every person in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power.”
That being said, we may have to wait a little while longer before the Court weighs in further on the issue. As reporting from The Hill also mentioned, the “administration is not yet asking the justices to rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s order but instead is seeking to limit the lower rulings’ nationwide impact, insisting those courts went too far.”
The idea of birthright citizenship comes from the 14th Amendment. As proponents of Trump’s executive order have argued, including in columns for Townhall, the framers of the amendment never intended for it to include citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. The 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark also examined 14th Amendment rights for legal Chinese laborers. As Ann Coulter wrote not long after Trump signed the executive order, with original emphasis, “One thing Wong Kim Ark definitely didn’t do was grant a constitutional right of citizenship to anyone who happens to be born here. First, children born to diplomats and heads of state were excluded.” Many states have also signed briefs providing Trump with legal backup.
Matt predicted last month that the matter would come before the justices after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate the order limiting birthright citizenship.
The issue of courts going too far is not new for Trump’s second administration, especially when it comes to who can be fired or not by the Trump administration, and security clearances being revoked. That being said, a 5-4 emergency ruling came last week in which the Court ordered the Trump administration to reinstate billions of dollars in foreign aid. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with all three of the liberal justices for the ruling.
