The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments on May 15 over President Donald Trump’s order restricting birthright citizenship and whether federal judges went too far in their decisions to block his directive nationwide.
It’s the first major hearing of Trump’s second term and could offer insight into how the justices view the ongoing legal challenges to his agenda. So far, federal judges have blocked a long list of the president’s second-term policies while provoking criticism from Republicans alleging they abused their authority.
The justices’ eventual comments will play a role in congressional attempts to rein in the use of nationwide injunctions while also clarifying when they are and aren’t appropriate.
The hearing is somewhat unusual in that it’s less focused on substantive interpretation of laws or constitutional provisions compared with other hearings. Instead, the administration has asked the court to temporarily halt three nationwide injunctions while the more in-depth questions about birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment play out in the court system.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in a brief to the court on April 7 that Trump’s second term had already seen double the nationwide injunctions granted in the first three years of the Biden administration.
“Those injunctions thwart the Executive Branch’s crucial policies on matters ranging from border security, to international relations, to national security, to military readiness,” he said.
The Supreme Court could wade into the particulars of the orders and whether the judges needed to issue such sweeping injunctions. They could also probe the nature of judges’ authority in issuing nationwide injunctions.
Republicans have suggested that the practice of issuing nationwide relief, which has grown in recent years, exceeds the parameters that Article III of the Constitution sets up for courts’ authority.
That portion of the Constitution says the judicial branch has power over “cases” and “controversies.” Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has accused judges of exceeding that authority by granting relief to parties not before the court.
Amid the procedural intricacies, the justices could still consider the constitutionality of the president’s order in weighing whether the lower courts were right to issue injunctions at a preliminary stage of litigation.
The issue stems from a provision of the 14th Amendment, which reads: “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.”
The executive branch has interpreted this amendment to mean that the children of illegal immigrants should receive citizenship. Trump disputed that in his order on Jan. 20 and said that the amendment wasn’t so far-reaching.
His order directed the government not to grant citizenship if a 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. The order 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.
Critics say Trump’s interpretation flies in the face of the plain language of the amendment and a decision the Supreme Court issued in 1898 called United States v. Wong Kim Ark. That case saw a majority of the court hold that the 14th Amendment granted birthright citizenship to a Chinese man whose parents were legally present in the United States.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said in his Feb. 6 opinion that illegal immigrants were covered by the term “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” He, like other judges, has argued in favor of the nationwide scope of their injunctions.
Coughenour said in February that a geographically limited injunction would be “ineffective” because plaintiff states would have to pay for the children of illegal immigrants who travel from other states.
“For example, babies born in other states would travel to the Plaintiff States,“ he said. ”Once they do, those persons would be eligible for service and support that, without nationwide relief, need be funded by the Plaintiff States.”
