The legal battle over President Donald Trump’s move to end his natural citizenship is far from the end, despite a major Republican administration’s victory on Friday, despite limiting national injunctions.
Immigration advocates pledge to fight to ensure that birthright citizenship remains law as Republican presidents seek to abolish precedents for more than a century.
The High Court’s decision sends back to the lower court cases that challenge the president’s executive order. However, the ultimate fate of the president’s policy remains uncertain.
Here’s what you need to know about birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court decision and what happens next.
What does birthright citizenship mean?
Basis-right citizenship makes everyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born illegally from the country’s mother.
This practice dates back to the Civil War, when Congress ratified the 14th amendment to the Constitution, in part to ensure that black people, including former slaves, have citizenship.
“Everyone born or naturalized in the United States or subject to its jurisdiction is a citizen of the United States,” the amendment states.
Two experts explain the origins of birthright citizenship and what it takes to change it in the United States.
Thirty years later, Wong Kim Ark, a man born to Chinese parents in the United States, was denied re-enter the United States after traveling abroad. His case led to the Supreme Court, which explicitly ruled that the amendment granted citizenship to those born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ legal status.
Since then, there have been only a handful of exceptions, including children born from US diplomats.
Trump has long said he wants to abolish his birthright
Trump’s executive order, signed in January, attempts to deny the citizenship of children born to people living in the United States, either illegally or temporarily. It is part of the president’s hard-line immigration agenda, who called birthright citizenship the “magnet of illegal immigration.”
Trump and his supporters focus on one phrase of the amendment – “the subject of that jurisdiction” – means that the United States can illegally deny the citizenship of babies born to women in the country.
President Donald Trump signed the executive order on his first day returning to an office that targeted the correct citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
A series of federal judges said it was not true and issued a nationwide injunction to stop his order from becoming effective.
“I’ve been on the bench for over 40 years. I can’t remember another case where the questions presented were just as clear as this. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” US District Judge John Corneau said at a hearing in Seattle court earlier this year.
“The Supreme Court has been rejected despite the atmosphere and domestic courts have not been approved so far,” wrote the US district judge Deborah, in Greenbelt, Maryland, a suburb of Washington.
Is Trump’s order a constitution? I didn’t say justice
The High Court decision was a major victory for the Trump administration in that it limited the powers of individual judges in granting a nationwide injunction. The administration welcomed the ruling as a monumental check on the powers of individual district court judges who argued that Trump supporters wanted to cut off his priorities on immigration and other issues and rob the president of the president.
However, the Supreme Court did not address the merits of Trump’s bid to enforce his birthright citizenship executive order.
“The Trump administration made a strategic decision, but it paid off very clearly and I thought they would challenge the scope of the relief, not the merits of the judges,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School.
Attorney General Pam Bondy told White House reporters that he is “very confident” that the administration will ultimately side with the administration over the merits of the case.
President Donald Trump discussed the Supreme Court’s ruling to end a national injunction that halted many of his policies, including ending his innate citizenship in his second term.
Questions and uncertainty swirls the next step
The judge will kick a case challenging the birthright citizenship policy and return to the lower court, where the judge will have to decide how to adjust the order to comply with the new ruling. The executive order remains blocked for at least 30 days, giving lower courts and parties time to sort out their next steps.
The Supreme Court ruling opens the possibility that groups challenging policy still receive national relief through class actions and seek recognition as a national class. Within hours of the ruling, two class action lawsuits were filed in Maryland and New Hampshire, attempting to block Trump’s orders.
But it’s difficult to get national relief through class actions as courts place hurdles on doing so over the years, said Suzette Malbou, a professor at Washington and Lee Law School.
“Class action lawsuits are not an easy and refreshing way to avoid this issue of no national relief,” said Malveaux, who urged the High Court not to rule out a national injunction.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote the court’s objection, urged the lower court to quickly rule “to act promptly on such a request for relief and allow for a prompt review of this court to “challenge policies as illegal and harmful as citizenship orders.”
Opponents of Trump’s orders warned of a statewide police patchwork, leading to national unreliable disruption and confusion.
“Birthright citizenship has been resolved in the constitution for over a century,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Hefuge, a nonprofit organization that supports refugees and immigration. “By rejecting the lower court and refusing its ability to enforce its rights uniformly, the court has invited confusion, inequality and fear.”
Associated Press reporters Mark Sherman and Lindsay Whitehurst were contributed by Mike Catalinini of Trenton, Washington.
Hours after the Supreme Court ruled that it would block a national court injunction, advocacy groups filed a temporary restraining order to prevent President Donald Trump’s natural citizenship from taking effect.
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