The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision divided along ideological lines on Friday, ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s request to limit national injunctions issued by federal courts. The opinion in the birthright citizenship case was highly anticipated.
At issue was how lower courts should handle President Trump’s executive order, which declared that children of parents who enter the US illegally or with temporary visas do not have an automatic right to citizenship.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, did not decide whether President Trump’s executive order violates the 14th Amendment or the Nationality Act. Instead, it focused on whether federal courts have the power to issue nationwide blocks.
“National injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress granted to federal courts,” said the conservative majority. “The Court grants the Government’s requests for a partial stay of the injunctions issued below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
Friday’s opinion asked lower courts to reconsider their broad decisions in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion and, otherwise, “with principles of equity.” However, the opinion also said that Trump’s birthright citizenship order cannot take effect for 30 days from Friday’s opinion, giving more time for judicial challenges.
Dissenting from Friday’s decision were the three liberal justices of the court. Writing for the three, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the government’s rush to limit national injunctions “disrespects basic principles of equity, as well as the long history of injunctive relief granted to non-parties.”
Immigrant rights groups and 22 states sued against Trump’s birthright citizenship order, and three different federal district judges invalidated Trump’s order, issuing what are called national injunctions that prohibit the administration from applying Trump’s policy anywhere in the country.
When appellate courts refused to intervene while the litigation proceeded, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block the national injunctions completely.
Although Friday’s decision is procedural, the issue at the center of the case is Trump’s long-standing but fringe view that there is no such thing as automatic citizenship for people born in the US. On his first day in office this year, he signed an executive order declaring that babies born in the US may not be citizens if their parents were not here legally or if the parents were here legally but on a temporary basis like a work visa. Trump’s view, however, is directly contradicted by a 127-year-old Supreme Court decision — a decision that has never been overturned and that is based on the text of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
The amendment says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” It was enacted in 1866 after the Civil War and aimed to reverse the infamous Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott, which had declared that black people, enslaved or free, could not be citizens. It has always been applied to anyone born in the US. And the Supreme Court on Friday did nothing to change that 150-year understanding.
President Trump responded to the decision on Truth Social, calling it “a great victory.” He insinuated that immigrants were trying to fraud the process to obtain US citizenship and that the 14th Amendment was only intended to give citizenship to “slave babies (same year!).”.
Source: npr.org by Nina Totenberg