The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to rule on the president’s executive order which said the children of illegal migrants and those on short-term U.S. visas should be denied American citizenship, after it was ruled unconstitutional by lower courts.
Newsweek contacted the Department of Justice and the White House for comment on Saturday via online inquiry form and email respectively.
Why It Matters
President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “PROTECTING THE MEANING AND VALUE OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP” on January 20 just hours after his second presidential inauguration, showing the importance of the issue to his administration.
With Republican control over both chambers of Congress, the courts have emerged as one of the main impediments of the Trump administration, which has suffered legal defeats on subjects including sanctions on International Criminal Court employees, and a bid to strip Haitian migrants of legal protection. However the Supreme Court, which currently has a conservative majority, could be more favorable.
What To Know
On Friday Solicitor General D. John Sauer submitted a petition to the Supreme Court asking them to hear arguments on the legality of his birthright citizenship executive order early next year, potentially leading to a June ruling.
The move comes after a series of lower courts ruled the Executive Order violated the 14th Amendment, and was thus unconstitutional.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to limit, but not end, the power of lower courts to obstruct the Executive Order in a procedural case, but it has not ruled on the merits of birthright citizenship itself.
Birthright citizenship has widely been regarded as a constitutional right, with only a few exemptions, since the 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark ruling, concerning the son of a Chinese immigrant.
In July, following the Supreme Court’s procedural ruling, a federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the decision by a Seattle judge which blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship policy nationwide in a case brought by a coalition of Democratic states.
That month also saw a New Hampshire judge bar enforcement of Trump’s Executive Order in response to a lawsuit submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Trump administration is appealing both rulings.
What People Are Saying
In his petition to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Sauer wrote: “The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children, not to the children of illegal aliens, birth tourists, and temporary visitors.
“The plain text of the Clause requires more than birth on U.S. soil alone.”
He also said: “The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security. Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”
In the New Hampshire case, ACLU attorney Cody Wofsy said: “This executive order is illegal, full stop, and no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that.
“We will continue to ensure that no baby’s citizenship is ever stripped away by this cruel and senseless order.”
What Happens Next
It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will act on the Trump administration’s request and take up the birthright citizenship case. Doing so would be somewhat unusual as the Supreme Court only typically takes up a case after multiple lower appeals court rulings.
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