Trump's Push for Ending Birthright Citizenship: A Backdoor Approach to Supreme Court
Supreme Court Challenged over Trump's Proposal to Alter Birthright Citizenship via an Alternative Argument
Donald Trump's administration is throwing a curveball in their attempt to axe birthright citizenship. By cleverly targeting court power, they aim to sway conservative Supreme Court justices, ushering in changes that could disrupt this long-standing practice for centuries.
Instead of attacking the heart of the issue, the administration has launched a series of emergency appeals, accusing lower courts of overstepping their boundaries and impeding the White House's agenda. By using this approach, they pray that Trump can, at the very least, temporarily rewrite over a century of settled law that weaves itself into the fabric of American society.
Sarah Harris, acting Solicitor General, pleaded her case to the Supreme Court, insisting that the excessive use of sweeping, temporary nationwide orders has spiraled out of control since the current administration took office. She urged the court to put a stop to this, asserting that "enough is enough."
The justices, however, seem in no rush to settle the matter. They requested a response from the groups challenging Trump by April 4, a delayed timeline that’s unusual for the court's emergency docket.
The birthright citizenship appeals emerged at a time when judges are grappling with a swarm of questionable executive actions. The Supreme Court has twice already declined to overturn lower courts that blocked Trump initiatives since January 20.
These cases sparked fiery dissents from some conservative justices who questioned the power of lower courts to halt the administration's actions. Trump's latest appeal, repeatedly invoking conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, appears designed to rally further support for this stance.
However, experts argue that the birthright citizenship case may be an unlikely vehicle for altering the way lower courts operate. The main reason stems from the controversy surrounding Trump's stance on birthright citizenship. For more than 150 years, courts have comprehended the 14th Amendment's text to grant citizenship to individuals "born or naturalized in the United States," regardless of the immigration status of their parents.
Courts have issued sweeping injunctions against Trump's birthright citizenship plans, leading to a string of early legal defeats for the new president. A federal judge described Trump's effort as "blatantly unconstitutional." Three federal appeals courts declined to lift those orders.
The administration framed their request to the Supreme Court as "modest," asserting that it doesn’t aim to entirely lift the injunctions - only to refine their scope to the parties who sued. If a majority of justices grant the request, it would allow the administration to proceed with its executive order against all but a handful of individuals.
"The government's argument is anything but 'modest,'" said Rupa Bhattacharyya, legal director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, representing two of the groups challenging Trump. "It would destroy the very concept of the United States as a nation if children born in Tennessee were denied citizenship while children born in Washington state were granted it."
Transgender care to immigration
In one sense, Trump is rehashing an old legal argument and taking a stance that has garnered bipartisan support at times. In the final days of the Biden administration, for instance, the Justice Department also called on the Supreme Court to consider restricting the use of universal injunctions - an invitation the court declined.
The Supreme Court delved into the issue just last year in an emergency appeal concerning Idaho's stringent statewide ban on gender-affirming care for minors. A majority allowed Idaho to enforce its ban, erasing a lower court’s sweeping injunction that had blocked its implementation.
Gorsuch, in a lengthy concurrence, bemoaned lower courts' injunctions that extended beyond the people who first challenged the policy.
"Lower courts would be wise to take heed," Gorsuch warned in an opinion joined by Thomas and Alito. "Retiring the universal injunction may not be the answer to everything that ails us. But it will lead federal courts to become a little truer to the historic limits of their office."
Gorsuch's concurrence is the exact Supreme Court opinion the Justice Department cited in its appeals Thursday. Harris argued that courts have not heeded but have instead doubled down. She did not address the counterargument: That courts are simply reacting to a president who campaigned on overhauling the status quo, inviting legal challenges.
'Micromanaging' Trump
In the background, the Trump administration is presenting a contingency argument to the Supreme Court - one that might find some traction. If the justices refuse to authorize officials to implement the order, the administration argues, then the court should let the executive branch plan for its execution.
The lower court orders halt internal planning in rulings the administration said, "micromanage the internal operations of the executive branch."
The orders "have prevented executive agencies from developing and issuing public guidance explaining how the executive branch would carry out the citizenship order," Harris informed the Supreme Court. These orders, she asserted, "exceed the courts’ authority" under the Constitution.
If a majority of the court wishes to offer the administration a win on part of its request without addressing the more substantial questions involved, the issue of internal planning would have the least impact.
US District Judge Deborah Boardman, nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, questioned why officials would want to move forward with planning an order widely understood to be illegal.
"Surely, the government has no valid interest in taking internal, preparatory steps to formulate policies and guidance on an unconstitutional executive order," Boardman wrote last month.
A landmark Supreme Court precedent from 1898 affirmed the notion that people born in the United States are citizens, and the modern court hasn't indicated a desire to revisit this holding. Some conservatives have argued that these long-held views are incorrect because the 14th Amendment includes a phrase that citizenship applies only to individuals who are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States.
- The administration's appeal to the Supreme Court for a reevaluation of their birthright citizenship plan, specifically focusing on Justice Neil Gorsuch's concurrence in the Idaho gender-affirming care case, appears to be a strategic move meant to gather support from Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito, hoping to curb what they consider excessive micromanaging of the executive branch.
- As the Supreme Court hasn't shown a desire to revisit the landmark 1898 decision that established birthright citizenship, the birthright citizenship case might be an improbable path to altering the role of lower courts, despite recent emergency orders against Trump's plan being described as blatantly unconstitutional.
- The Trump administration alleges that court orders halting internal planning for the birthright citizenship executive order "micromanage the internal operations of the executive branch," potentially offering a less substantial but still viable avenue for a Supreme Court victory on this matter.
