C-SPAN is urging the Supreme Court to allow live video coverage of oral arguments next week regarding President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship.
“This case holds profound national significance,” Feist wrote in the April 23 letter.
“Its implications—legal, political, and personal—will affect millions of Americans. In light of this, we believe the public interest is best served through live television coverage of the proceedings. The public deserves to witness—fully and directly—how such a consequential issue is argued before the highest court in the land.”
Permitting live video coverage of the case would offer “Americans outside the few seated inside the Court, the ability to also see how critical issues are debated and decided at the highest level,” he wrote.
C-SPAN stands “ready to work with the Court to ensure that this broadcast is conducted with the dignity and respect befitting the occasion,” Feist added.
In filings for the appeal, the Department of Justice did not ask the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the executive order itself, although it acknowledged that the birthright citizenship question raises “important constitutional questions with major ramifications for securing the border.”
Instead, the department made what it called a “modest” request.
“While the parties litigate weighty questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purport to cover every person ... in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power,” it wrote.
According to Trump’s executive order, an individual born in the United States is not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” if that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the country and the individual’s father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the person’s birth.
It also states that the privilege of U.S. citizenship does not apply to an individual whose mother’s presence was lawful but temporary and whose father was neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at the time of that individual’s birth.
The executive order prompted debate over the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Critics of Trump’s order have cited the Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the court held that the 14th Amendment granted birthright citizenship to a Chinese man whose parents were legally present in the United States.
Boardman wrote that she was issuing a nationwide injunction against the executive order because “only a nationwide injunction will provide complete relief to the plaintiffs” in the case.
Nationwide injunctions, also known as non-party or universal injunctions, set policy for the entire country.
Such injunctions have become controversial in recent years as they have become increasingly common. Since Trump began his second term, multiple federal district judges have issued injunctions blocking his policies, leading to calls from congressional Republicans to impeach district judges and restrict their injunction-granting powers.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Supreme Court’s public information office for comment on the letter. No reply was received by publication time.
