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States ask SCOTUS to nix Trump on birthright citizenship

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 08:27:40 +0000

President Donald Trump speaks at a reception celebrating Greek Independence Day in the East Room of the White House, Monday, March 24, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).

Several states who have, so far, kept the Trump administration from moving forward with its expressed plans to ban birthright citizenship are pleading with the U.S. Supreme Court to keep it that way.

In a 50-page response to the Trump administration’s application for a partial stay, the lead plaintiffs in one of three similar efforts to stop the ban say the state of the law is firm and set and that there is “not an emergency warranting the extraordinary remedy of a stay.”

“Many aspects of constitutional interpretation are hotly debated, but not the merits question in this case,” the Friday motion reads. “For over a century, it has been the settled view of this Court, Congress, the Executive Branch, and legal scholars that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause guarantees citizenship to babies born in the United States regardless of their parents’ citizenship, ‘allegiance,’ ‘domicile,’ immigration status, or nationality.”

In Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts, federal judges have issued orders prohibiting federal agencies from implementing or enforcing Trump’s Executive Order 14160.

While the government asked the high court to undo each of the three separate pauses in the same application, each of those three cases is docketed individually — and consecutively. The likely upshot, however, is each case being consolidated into the same general controversy — if and when the justices decide to hear oral arguments.

The Trump administration’s appeal largely eschews the merits of the underlying birthright citizenship policy in favor of fighting over the propriety of the district court injunctions stopping the ban.

The plaintiffs in the case stylized as Trump v. Washington suggest a certain level of laziness because the government’s effort bypasses the merits discussed by the district courts in favor of a “myopic request” that “instead focuses entirely on the scope of relief.”

“Unsurprisingly, every court to evaluate the Citizen Stripping Order has found it unconstitutional,” the motion continues. “And the stay application does not even bother asking this Court to review those correct conclusions.”

Even on the Trump administration’s terms, however, the plaintiffs say there is simply no reason for dissolving the lower court orders.

“Most obviously, the federal government can show no harm from simply being ordered to continue following the law as it has long been understood,” the motion goes on. “Preserving the status quo while this litigation rapidly proceeds cannot plausibly be an irreparable injury, and this Court can deny the stay on this ground alone.”

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Threaten to fundamentally fracture the country’: Groups tell SCOTUS Trump’s arguments in birthright case could recreate divisions like those ‘between slave and free states’

The plaintiffs rubbish the government for arguing they have and will continue to suffer “irreparable harm” from extant and prospective “universal injunctions.” Especially because this theory is only advanced in general terms, the response motion notes.

“The federal government alleges various harms from overbroad injunctions generally, but offers no evidence whatsoever of irreparable harm from the specific injunctions at issue here,” the motion reads. “And with good reason. There is no plausible argument that the government will be irreparably harmed by continuing to respect a foundational constitutional right that has been established—and accepted by all branches of the federal government—for more than a century.”

In fact, the states predict the procedural gambit will be summarily rejected. A chapter heading in the motion is titled, “There Is No Reasonable Probability that this Court Will Grant Certiorari or Fair Prospect of Reversal.”

The Washington plaintiffs also spend considerable time addressing the merits of the case – including the Supreme Court case long-considered authoritative on birthright citizenship.

“The Fourteenth Amendment’s plain text guarantees citizenship to all born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” the motion reads. “The Citizenship Clause is broad by design, bestowing citizenship on children born in the United States regardless of race, ethnicity, alienage, or the immigration status of one’s parents. Binding precedent confirms that understanding,”

The motion continues like this, at length:

The federal government seeks to distort the term “subject to the jurisdiction” beyond all recognizable bounds. But as a matter of text, history, and precedent, the group of U.S.-born individuals not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States is both extraordinarily small and well defined. As this Court held in Wong Kim Ark, that phrase reflects a narrow and historically grounded exception for groups recognized as exempt from the United States’ jurisdiction as a matter of fact, comity, or practice. In particular, it excludes U.S.-born children who are born to diplomats covered by diplomatic immunity and members of foreign armies at war against the United States. It has never been understood to exclude U.S.-born children based on their parents’ citizenship, immigration status, “allegiance,” or “domicile,” and indeed, the federal government does not point to a single binding case that accepts its strained theory.

The Washington response motion also briefly addresses the Trump administration’s arguments about nationwide injunctions to heart. The motion acknowledges that such relief has increased apace in recent years but stressing that nationwide injunctions do, in fact, have a time and a place.

“The Citizenship Stripping Order shows precisely why nationwide relief is critical in an extraordinary case like this one,” the motion goes on. “Restricting nationwide relief would be particularly inappropriate here, as it would defeat a central guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to create a uniform, national rule for citizenship. If any injunction warranted a nationwide scope, it is this one.”

Washington strongly admonishes the government for trying to litigate the injunction issue using the birthright citizenship cases.

The motion concludes:

The Citizenship Stripping Order’s attempt to unilaterally amend the Fourteenth Amendment warrants an injunction that preserves the guarantee of birthright citizenship as it has long existed: A uniform right that applies nationwide and is beyond the President’s power to destroy. The federal government has failed to establish any of the criteria necessary to get the extraordinary relief they seek and have not come close to meeting their “especially heavy burden.” These cases are proceeding on expedited schedules in three different courts of appeals—all of which have denied the federal government this very same intervention. The federal government has not shown irreparable harm or a reasonable probability the Court would grant certiorari and reverse the district court’s order. This case is not a vehicle to resolve the question of nationwide injunctions. And the public interest weighs heavily against granting a stay. The Application should be denied.

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SCOTUS asked to reject Trump in birthright citizenship case

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 23:57:11 +0000

President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during an Iftar dinner in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 27, 2025 (Pool via AP).

A coalition of immigrant rights and liberal legal advocacy groups is imploring the U.S. Supreme Court to reject President Donald Trump‘s appeal of several lower court orders that bar the government from enacting any of its expressed plans to ban birthright citizenship.

In a 49-page opposition to the Trump administration’s application for a partial stay, the lead plaintiffs in one of three so-far-successful efforts to stop the ban say there is simply “no emergency warranting” the issuance of an emergency stay of the district court’s injunction.

“The government invokes this Court’s emergency docket without identifying any emergency,” the Friday motion reads. “The government can show no harm whatsoever from the district court’s injunction, which merely requires the Executive Branch to continue complying with the settled interpretation of the Citizenship Clause during the pendency of this litigation.”

In Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts, federal judges have issued orders prohibiting federal agencies from implementing or enforcing Trump’s Executive Order 14160.

While the government sued for relief to undo each of the three separate pauses in the same application, each of those three cases is now docketed differently — and consecutively. The likely upshot, however, is that each case is consolidated into the same general controversy — if and when the justices decide to hear oral arguments.

The government says the “universal injunctions” in each of those three cases generally harm the government in various ways unrelated to immigration and have specifically harmed states that want the ban on birthright citizenship enforced.

The plaintiffs in the case stylized as Trump v. CASA say the government’s strategy should not be countenanced because of the “most fundamental right” at stake in the litigation.

“There is nothing ‘modest’ about the government’s request for emergency relief in this case,” the filing reads. “On his first day in office, the President issued an Executive Order that purports to upend birthright citizenship by executive fiat. But birthright citizenship is at the core of our Nation’s foundational precept that all people born on our soil are created equal, regardless of their parentage.”

The opposition motion criticizes the Trump administration for eliding the merits, while premising its request for a stay on the idea that “irreparable harm” will ensue unless the injunctions are dissolved.

“If the Court were to grant the government’s motion, chaos would ensue,” the motion continues. “The President cannot rewrite the Constitution or the Immigration and Nationality Act by executive fiat, and the government has certainly shown no extraordinary need to do so immediately.”

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs say, each of the three district courts that issued the injunctions has grappled with the merits.

“As every court to have considered the issue has concluded, the Executive Order facially violates the Constitution,” the motion continues. “The government does not challenge any of that before this Court. It does not argue that it is likely to succeed in defending the constitutionality of the Executive Order. And yet, the government asks this Court to intervene to lift the injunction so that the government may begin applying the facially unconstitutional Order against nearly everyone. That is not a modest request.”

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CASA goes on to argue for the necessity of a universal injunction.

“The universal injunction in this case preserves the uniformity of United States citizenship, an area in which nationwide consistency is vitally important,” the motion continues. “Whether a child is a citizen of our Nation should not depend on the state where she is born or the associations her parents have joined.”

The Trump administration, in seeking relief, reiterated prior arguments that, if the injunctions do stand, they should only apply “to the parties actually before the courts.” Here, that would effectively limit the injunction to a handful of states and members of groups like CASA.

The plaintiffs argue that limiting the injunction as the government proposes would create an untenable state of affairs in the country.

From the motion, at length:

Matters on the ground would be even worse if an injunction were to apply in some states but not others. Such an arrangement would threaten to fundamentally fracture the country. If a child’s citizenship depended on the state in which they were born, it would create a situation much like the one that existed between slave and free states, which produced Dred Scott and ultimately the Civil War. An infant would be a United States citizen and full member of society if born in New Jersey, but a deportable noncitizen if born in Tennessee. The Reconstruction Amendments, including the Citizenship Clause, were intended to prevent that sort of division between the states from ever occurring again. The Court should not now exercise its equitable power to re-create a situation in which a person’s fundamental right to citizenship depends on the state in which they are born.

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In contrast to the government’s motion, which avoided arguing the merits, the plaintiffs, led by CASA, used the opportunity to push a broadside argument that birthright citizenship is a constitutional “bedrock” of the United States.

“Congress passed and the States ratified the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to enshrine birthright citizenship in the Constitution, where no President could unilaterally take it away,” the motion goes on. “The Executive Order purports to reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment to limit citizenship by birth on our soil to only those children who have at least one parent who is a citizen or lawful permanent resident. But that is not birthright citizenship at all. The Order’s rule of citizenship by blood is inconsistent with not only the plain text of the Citizenship Clause, but also common law history, this Court’s precedent, a federal statute codifying the long-settled interpretation of the Citizenship Clause, and well over a century of consistent Executive Branch practice.”

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Third federal appeals court rejects Trump administration bid on birthright citizenship

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 23:38:17 +0000

Constitutional Law

Third federal appeals court rejects Trump administration bid on birthright citizenship

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 12, 2025, 12:05 pm CDT

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Boston on Tuesday refused to allow President Donald Trump’s order on birthright citizenship to take effect, joining two other federal appeals courts that also ruled against the administration on the issue. (Image from Shutterstock)

The 1st Circuit refused to stay pending appeal a federal judge’s Feb. 13 nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the order. The appeals court joined the 9th Circuit at San Francisco and the 4th Circuit at Richmond, Virginia, which issued similar rulings.

Law360, Reuters, the Associated Press and the Volokh Conspiracy covered the March 11 decision.

Trump’s Jan. 20 order bans birthright citizenship when a mother is in the country illegally or temporarily and when a father was not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident at the time.

U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the District of Massachusetts had granted a preliminary injunction to 18 states that challenged the order, finding that they were likely to succeed in their argument that it violated the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. The District of Columbia and San Francisco were also plaintiffs.

On appeal, U.S. Department of Justice lawyers did not “make any developed argument” that the government was likely to succeed in showing that Trump’s order was constitutional, the 1st Circuit said. Instead, lawyers claimed that the plaintiffs did not have standing.

The states had countered that they had standing because the order would result in a loss of federal funds for health care, special needs education, child welfare and applications for Social Security numbers.

The 1st Circuit sided with the states, finding that the government had not made the strong showing needed to overcome state arguments.

1st Circuit Chief Judge David J. Barron, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote the opinion in the case, New Jersey v. Trump.

New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin applauded the decision in a statement cited by Law360.

“Every court to consider President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship by executive order has found it is flagrantly unconstitutional, and every appellate court has rejected DOJ’s effort to put his order back in place,” Platkin said. “We are thrilled with the 1st Circuit’s decision, and we look forward to standing up for our birthright citizens no matter how far the Trump administration takes this case.”

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Pregnant women sue Trump over birthright citizenship order

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 22:38:10 +0000

President Donald Trump signing executive orders (WRC/YouTube).

Pregnant women across the country have been joining forces to file lawsuits against the federal government over the constitutionality of President Donald Trump‘s executive order ending birthright citizenship in the United States, according to court records.

Attorneys in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state have filed lawsuits on behalf of expecting parents in response to Trump’s order last week, which has been blasted as “blatantly unconstitutional” by federal judges as it runs into legal trouble.

Attorneys general of 18 states and two major cities, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have also teamed up to challenge the order — filing a joint lawsuit last Tuesday, Jan. 21, in federal district court.

“Plaintiffs bring this action to protect their states, localities, and residents from the President’s flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage,” the complaint says. “The principle of birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment unambiguously and expressly confers citizenship on ‘[a]ll persons born’ in and ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States. More than 125 years ago, the Supreme Court confirmed that this entitles a child born in the United States to noncitizen parents to automatic citizenship.”

The suit, which was filed in Massachusetts against Trump and the U.S. government, notes how Congress “subsequently codified that understanding in the Immigration and Nationality Act” and describes how the executive branch has “long recognized” that attempts to deny citizenship to children based on their parents’ status would be “unquestionably unconstitutional,” per the complaint.

“President Trump now seeks to abrogate this well-established and longstanding Constitutional principle by executive fiat,” the suit says.

Five pregnant women who are part of a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Maryland, along with two immigrant advocacy groups, have condemned Trump’s order as a “flagrant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment” and the history underlying the text of those enactments, “all of which guarantee the fundamental right to citizenship for all children born in the United States,” their suit says.

“The President has no unilateral authority to override rights recognized in the Constitution or in federal statutes,” the complaint states. “The principle of birthright citizenship is a foundation of our national democracy, is woven throughout the laws of our nation, and has shaped a shared sense of national belonging for generation after generation of citizens.”

Three pregnant women in Washington state — Alicia Chavarria Lopez, Cherly Norales Castillo and Delmy Franco Aleman — joined forces with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project to file a class action suit in federal court on Friday, Jan. 24, saying children will be left “stateless” under Trump’s executive order and unable to be recognized as citizens.

“Citizenship is the fundamental marker of belonging in this country,” the suit alleges. “Indeed, without citizenship, the babies soon to be born in this country whom President Trump unilaterally and unconstitutionally seeks to strip of citizenship will be left without any legal immigration status.”

In addition to Trump and the federal government, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Department of State, Attorney General James McHenry, the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have all been named in lawsuits related to birthright citizenship over the past week.

Trump’s order ultimately argues that the 14th Amendment “has always” excluded people whose parents are in the United States illegally on account of them not being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., the order says. Requests for comment by Law&Crime were not immediately returned Sunday.

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