A coalition of Democratic attorneys general from four states made their case against President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship.
More than a dozen states brought litigation against the order in January, and it was almost immediately halted by federal judges who ruled that it was unconstitutional.
The 14th Amendment guarantees the right to citizenship to “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.”
On the steps of the Supreme Court, following oral arguments related to judges issuing nationwide injunctions, four attorneys general from states involved in the litigation further made their case against the order.
“This president is acting unlawfully in violation of the Constitution, and we cannot address a more fundamental issue than the one the court is beginning to address today: What it means to be an American in the United States,” Washington state Attorney General Nicholas Brown said.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong noted that this case was personal for him.
“I became the first American citizen in my family by right of birth on American soil in Hartford, Connecticut,” he said. “And that is true today about millions upon millions of Americans.”
“The 14th Amendment establishes who we are … and it unlocks all the possibilities that have enabled our lives, in my life, all the lives here,” Tong added.
The Supreme Court previously affirmed the right to citizenship to all born on U.S. ground regardless of one’s parents’ legal status in the 19th-century landmark case United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
While the argument before the court on Thursday stemmed from Trump’s executive order to end citizenship for all children born in the United States, it more so focused on the question of whether federal judges can issue nationwide injunctions. Justices appeared to mostly disagree with the Trump administration’s argument regarding birthright citizenship, but there was no consensus on the issuing of nationwide injunctions or how an order deemed unlawful could be stayed without them.
The attorneys general also questioned how, if nationwide injunctions were to be abolished, children born in one state would retain their citizenship if they moved to another state whose attorney general did not sign onto this lawsuit. New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin noted that many residents in his state give birth in hospitals in larger cities outside the state.
“Are we really going to say that a child’s citizenship depends on whether or not the attorney general of the state of Pennsylvania, which did not join our suit, is in our suit?” Platkin said. “Come on, that’s not the case, so clearly this is a case that universal injunctions require.”
Justices across the ideological spectrum have critiqued the ramifications of nationwide injunctions over time. The Justice Department under the last five presidential administrations has likewise pushed back on the idea of nationwide injunctions. As it pertains to the Trump administration’s agenda, judges have issued more than a dozen nationwide injunctions.
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“We have said for years that universal injunctions should be held to limited circumstances,” Platkin said when asked by the Washington Examiner if the attorneys general believed that the justices found some bipartisan agreement on universal injunctions.
“But clearly those limited circumstances include a case where the president with a Sharpie rewrites the 14th Amendment and says overnight on his first day in office that the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, the plain text of it that has been in place for 157 years that the Supreme Court has set the meaning of for 127, that the executive branch has adhered to for over a century, is somehow different,” Platkin added.