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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 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 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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2 BigLaw firms reject routine special bonuses as several boutiques match or surpass market rate

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 06:31:22 +0000

Lawyer Pay

2 BigLaw firms reject routine special bonuses as several boutiques match or surpass market rate

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 19, 2024, 11:00 am CST

Above the Law’s bonus tracker continues to expand, as an increasing number of boutique law firms announce associate bonuses that match or surpass market rates set by Milbank. But some BigLaw firms are not falling in line with the standard special bonuses. (Image from Shutterstock)

Above the Law’s bonus tracker continues to expand, as an increasing number of boutique law firms announce associate bonuses that match or surpass market rates set by Milbank.

About 50 firms were on the bonus list when it was last updated Dec. 12, including nine boutique firms. At least five more boutiques announced bonuses since then, as chronicled in separate Above the Law posts.

One of them is Susman Godfrey, which “absolutely blows away the current market standard,” Above the Law reports.

Law.com and Law360 also have coverage.

The market rate for year-end bonuses is $15,000 to $115,000, while the going rate for additional special bonuses is $6,000 to $25,000. That makes the total bonus $21,000 for the class of 2024 to $140,000 for the class of 2016 and beyond.

Susman Godfrey is paying median bonuses ranging from $110,000 to $220,000. All 286 of the firm’s employees are also receiving bonuses.

Not to be outdone, midsize firm Boies Schiller Flexner previously announced that “multiple associates” at the firm are receiving bonuses of $1 million or more this year. In addition, “numerous associates” received above-market bonuses, including several who received $300,000 or more. The outsized bonuses are being paid to associates who opted for a bonus formula with a revenue-share component, rather than market-rate bonuses.

Other boutiques that have announced above-market bonuses include Selendy Gay (with combined bonuses ranging from $23,250 to $157,250) and Wilkinson Stekloff (with combined bonuses ranging from $28,500 to $197,500).

While above-market bonuses by those firms are “not a new phenomenon,” Law.com reports, the number of others offering “eye-popping bonuses appears to be growing.”

Boutique firms are in a better position to offer above-market bonuses because their overhead is lower than that of BigLaw firms, said Jeff Lowe, a Washington, D.C., recruiter with legal search company CenterPeak, in an interview with Law.com The pool of associates who will receive the bonuses is also smaller, Lowe pointed out.

Some BigLaw firms, meanwhile, are not falling in line with the standard special bonuses that range from $6,000 to $25,000, report Bloomberg Law and Above the Law (here and here). The latest firms that aren’t paying routine special bonuses are Perkins Coie and Hogan Lovells.

While Hogan Lovells isn’t paying the routine special bonuses, it will pay additional bonuses to associates who exceed minimum hours.

Other firms requiring an hourly minimum for special bonuses include Covington & Burling, Fish & Richardson, Katten Muchin Rosenman, Norton Rose Fulbright, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman (paying “super bonuses” to high billers), Seward & Kissel and Sidley Austin, according to previous coverage.

Bonus decisions are being made amid a “muted” market for associates following talent wars in 2021, Bloomberg Law points out. Then came a period of cutbacks that brought some associate layoffs.

Now, firms are realistically looking at what they can afford, said Katherine Loanzon, a managing director at search company Kinney Recruiting, in an interview with Bloomberg Law.

“Firms just don’t feel the pressure anymore to follow,” Loanzon told Bloomberg Law.

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