The Supreme Court is now hearing a major case about President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship protections, according to BBC News. This case asks whether lower courts have the power to block Trump’s executive orders across the whole country, especially his order that children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants should not be recognized as citizens.
After Trump returned to the White House, he quickly signed this order, but three federal judges stopped it, saying Trump did not have the authority to make such a big change on his own. Trump argues that these judges should not be able to block his orders everywhere, and if the Supreme Court agrees with him, he could use executive orders more easily without much interference from courts.
Many legal experts say that birthright citizenship is protected by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, so even if Trump wins this case, he may face more legal challenges. The Supreme Court, which now has a conservative majority including three justices appointed by Trump, has not said when it will make a final decision on this important issue.
According to the Associated Press, the Supreme Court is reviewing emergency appeals from the Trump administration after lower courts stopped his plan to take away citizenship from children born in the U.S. to people living in the country without legal status. The case is one of several urgent matters about immigration that the administration wants the court to address, including ending special protections for hundreds of thousands of people from countries like Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The justices are also looking at whether judges can issue nationwide orders, called universal injunctions, that block government policies for everyone, not just the people involved in a lawsuit. The Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, says these broad orders go too far and make it hard for the government to carry out its policies.
During Thursday’s hearing, the justices focused on whether judges have the right to block policies everywhere or only for the people who sued. The outcome could affect not just this case, but many other government actions in the future. The Associated Press notes that the Supreme Court’s decision will be closely watched because it could change how much power presidents and judges have in the United States.
SCOTUSblog mentions that after more than two hours of arguments, the Supreme Court did not clearly decide if federal judges can block Trump’s birthright citizenship order while the case continues in lower courts. The Trump administration argued it should be allowed to put at least part of the order into effect, but several justices seemed unsure about completely ending nationwide injunctions. Most of the discussion was about whether judges should be able to stop a law or policy for everyone or just the people in a lawsuit, instead of focusing on whether Trump’s order is legal under the Constitution.
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