Unclear How Supreme Court Will Rule On Nationwide Injunctions, Birthright Citizenship
By Morgan Sweeney
(The Center Square) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments over whether district judges can issue nationwide injunctions against President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. Based on justices questions, it’s unclear how the court will rule.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order attempting to reinterpret the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which was passed by Congress just after the Civil War and has historically been interpreted to bestow citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Entitled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” the order contended that birthright citizenship was never meant to apply to the children of people who have immigrated to the country illegally or who are in the U.S. on a temporary status.
“This order reflects the original meaning of the 14th amendment, which guaranteed citizenship to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens or temporary visitors,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued for the administration in his opening statement to the court.
But Thursday’s oral arguments revolved around whether judges have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions in cases brought by a limited number of plaintiffs, or whether it’s an abuse of their power, with the constitutionality of the birthright citizenship executive order a kind of secondary issue.
The plaintiffs in this case argued that the Supreme Court must take the order into account when making their decision – according to an often-used judicial rubric for evaluating requests for preliminary injunctive relief – but both sides were supposed to focus their arguments on the legality of the judicial practice of universal injunctions.
Injunctions prevent the enforcement of an action until a court rules otherwise. The administration is opposing lower courts’ use of nationwide injunctions, as dozens have been ordered against Trump initiatives just a few months into his second term.
Sauer argued that the judicial powers granted in Article III of the Constitution “[exist] only to address the injury to the complaining party,” and nationwide injunctions – by virtue of the fact that they’re nationwide – affect many more people outside of those involved in the case.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson challenged that explanation.
“It’s a very common concept for the court to enjoin a defendant from doing particular unlawful behavior, and what you’re now asking us to do is to require that the court have an additional limitation in its order that you only have to stop doing this with respect to the plaintiff, and that’s the part that I don’t understand.”
