The Supreme Court has decided to review the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship.
The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to take up the case in September, arguing that the clause was “adopted to confer citizenship on the newly freed slaves and their children, not on the children of aliens temporarily visiting the United States or of illegal aliens.” According to Trump lawyers, President Trump’s order ending the practice “restores the original meaning of the Citizenship Clause and provides, on a prospective basis only, that children of temporary visitors and illegal aliens are not U.S. citizens by birth.”
President Trump’s January order on the subject asserts that the Fourteenth Amendment “has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
Separately, legal group American First Legal is leading an effort to end birthright citizenship by returning to the “original meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment. AFL filed a brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of members of the House Judiciary Committee, arguing that allegiance is a “reciprocal relationship.” According to the filing, “The person must be present with the consent of the sovereign,” although illegal immigrants and their children are “present in the United States without consent.”
“Because the Fourteenth Amendment does not confer citizenship on the children of illegally present aliens, and because Congress has not done so by statute, the other branches cannot confer such citizenship on their own,” the brief adds. “The Executive Order at issue here properly ensures that rule is followed within the executive branch, but the lower courts nonetheless enjoined the Executive Order.”
The Supreme Court previously ruled on a case involving birthright citizenship, although the matter did not pertain to the order’s constitutionality. Rather, the administration inquired as to whether lower courts can issue injunctions blocking orders nationwide. The Court ruled that universal injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”
