President Donald Trump‘s administration asked the Supreme Court in three emergency petitions to allow him to press forward with ending birthright citizenship, elevating the dispute over one of his most controversial executive orders to the nine justices.
In the trio of appeals, the Justice Department stated that lower courts mishandled their rulings to issue nationwide injunctions to block the policy, asking the justices to limit those orders.
“Three district courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington have issued overlapping nationwide injunctions at the behest of 22 States, two organizations, and seven individuals,” according to one of the petitions authored by acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris.
“Those universal injunctions prohibit a Day 1 Executive Order from being enforced anywhere in the country, as to ‘hundreds of thousands’ of unspecified individuals who are ‘not before the court nor identified by the court,’” DOJ lawyers added.
The lawsuits against the Trump birthright order have been targeted by plaintiffs such as pregnant women who say their children’s ability to be born as natural citizens is jeopardized by the initiative, arguing it violates over 140 years of understanding of the 14th Amendment’s text that guarantees citizenship to anyone “born or naturalized in the United States.”
So far, at least four lower courts have stalled the birthright order across the nation.
APPEALS COURT DENIES TRUMP FROM ENDING BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
But some conservative legal scholars have argued that the 14th Amendment’s text implies that citizenship applies only if at least one parent is a citizen or has been naturalized in the country, arguing that the status quo has been used to promote “birth tourism” or “anchor babies” by parents who are otherwise illegally present in the nation.
This is a developing story and will be updated.