Court rejects bid to curtail birthright US citizenship
By: Nate Raymond
Reuters
..... An appeals court on Wednesday [02/19/2025] let stand an order blocking President Donald Trump from curtailing automatic birthright citizenship nationwide as part of the Republican's hard-line crackdown on immigration and illegal border crossings.
.....
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration's request for an emergency order putting on hold a nationwide injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle blocking the president's executive order.
..... It was the first time an appellate court had weighed in on Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship, whose fate may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire have likewise blocked it, and appeals are underway in two of those cases.
..... Trump's order signed on his first day back in the White House on January 20, [2025] directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States after Wednesday [01/22/2025] if neither parent was a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
..... Trump's U.S. Justice Department asked the 9th Circuit to by Thursday [02/20/2025] largely stay a ruling by Seattle-based U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenor declaring the policy unconstitutional, saying he went too far by issuing a nationwide injunction at the behest of four Democratic-led states.
..... But a three-judge panel declined to do so and instead set the case down for arguments in June. [2025]
..... U.S. Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest, whom Trump appointed during his first term, in a concurring opinion said a rapid ruling would risk eroding public confidence in judges who must "reach their decision apart form ideology or political preference."
..... "Nor do the circumstances themselves demonstrate an obvious emergency when it appears that the exception to birthright citizenship urged by the Government has never been recognized by the judiciary," she wrote.
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The other judges on the panel included U.S. circuit Judge William Canby, an appointee of former President Jimmy Carter and U.S. Circuit Judge Milan Smith, an appointee of former President George W. Bush.
..... The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.
..... Democratic state attorneys general, immigrate rights advocates and others have field a series of lawsuits alleging that Trump's executive order violate the citizenship clause of the U.S. constitution's 14th Amendment, which has long bee understood to recognize that virtually anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
..... They say the U.S. Supreme Court clearly ruled in 1898 in the case United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the 14th Amendment guarantee the right to birthright citizenship regardless of a child's parents' immigration status.
..... During a February 6 [2025] hearing, the judge said Trump's administration had sought to deprive children born in the U.S. soil of their fundamental right to citizenship by clocking what was effectively a constitutional amendment in an executive order.
..... If allowed to stand, the order would deny more than 150,000 children born annually in the U.S. the right to citizenship, the attorneys general say.