Justices hear birthright citizenship case
Also at issue is courts' ability to freeze laws, exec actions nationwide
By: Maureen Groppe
and Bart Jansen
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on May 15 [2025] wrestled with whether to let Persistent Donald Trump broadly enforce his changes to birthright citizenship as courts consider whether those changes are constitutional.
.....
The arguments covered two intertwined issues: birthright citizenship and the lower-octane but far-reaching question of whether a lower court may freeze enforcement of an order or law across the country.
..... The Trump administration made an emergency request for Supreme Court consideration after lower courts blocked the president's first-day executive order restricting the automatic right to citizenship for children born in the United States. Lower judges have ruled the policy will likely be found unconstitutional when full ligated, so Trump can't enforce it in the meantime.
..... the justices emended to pose tougher questions to the Trump administration's lawyers than to lawyers for the states and immigrants' rights advocates challenging the order. But they also probed whether there's an alternative to the national injunctions that district courts have issued. how the high court responds will affect not only birthright citizenship but also whether it will be harder for judges to pause other Trump initiatives.
..... It is exceptionally rare for the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments on emergency requests.
..... The Trump administration argued the executive order can only be paused for the people who are challenging it. The states, immigrants' rights groups and expectant parents who successfully sought national injunctions say they're the only way to prevent a chaotic patchwork of citizenship rules across the country.
..... Legal scholars say national injunctions began ramping up in 2015, and some justices have expressed displeasure with them. Trump faced 64 of the compr3ehensive blocks in his first term, and judges have been issuing injunctions at a pace to surpass that as courts deal with more than 200 lawsuits that have been filed against the administration.
.....
The justices batted around the thorny question.
..... Nationwide injunctions, Solicitor General John Sauer said for the administration, are "a bipartisan problem" that "encourage rampant forum shopping": Litigates choose districts where they think they can win, and then rulings spread unjustifiably nationwide.
..... Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Trump's argument that federal courts can't oder injunctions beyond the litigants of specif cases would mean even the Supreme Court couldn't make such orders.
..... "That makes no sense whatsoever," Sotomayor said.
.....
Sauer said lower courts could other remedies for specific litigants and potentially seek broader impact through a class action.
..... New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum, the executive order,s aid the nation has never allowed citizenship to vary by state. that would happen if the Supreme Court said Trump's policy were on hold only in the states that challenged it, he said.
..... Moreover, he said, there are no alternatives to universal injunctions that would help states in this case: States can't file calls-action suits.
..... Justice Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh asked about practical impacts of the executive order going into effect if the Supreme Court sided with the administration.
..... Gorsuch asked about the concern that narrowing the injunctions would leave a patchwork system of citizenship across th4e country. Sauer said that was a problem for the administration to deal with, not a reason to keep the national injunction in place.
..... What would hospitals and states do with newborns the next day? Kavanaugh asked.
..... Sauer said federal officials would have to figure that out.
....."How?" Kavanaugh asked. "You think they can get it together in time?"
..... Letting the ordered go into effect would produce "unprecedented chaos," Feigenbaum later argued. "We genuinely don't know how this could possibly work on the ground.: States face serious burdens when administration benefits and programs under the executive order, Feigenbaum argued, for instance, federal law requires sates to verify citizenship for Medicaid benefits.
.....
The justice mostly did not focus on the underlying issue: birthright citizenship. that was the emphasis of protesters outside, however, who led chants of "mighty nightly immigrants" and held signs saying "Defend the Constitution." A handful of Democratic lawmakers stopped by to speak to protesters, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
..... The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, declared: "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 Supreme Court upheld the amendment in 1998, in the case of a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents.
..... However, Trump said on social media May 15, [2025] "Birthright Citizenship was not meant for people taking vacations to become permanent Citizens of the United States of America, and bringing their families with them, all the time laughing at the 'SUCKERS' that we are!"
..... Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the court could quickly take up the underlying issue of whether Trump's order banning birthright citizenship is constitutional, and Justice Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barett asked why the Supreme Court shouldn't simply make that call immediately.
..... Sauer said that would leap ahead of the usual process of having lower courts grapple with the issue, airing all the arguments, before the Supreme Court weighs in.
..... When Sotomayor said the lower courts have been unanimous in their view that the executive order is likely unconstitutional, Sauer said the judges have been making "snap judgments."
..... Contributing: Lauren Villagran and Savannah Kuchar, USA Today