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Donald Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to allow his attempt at curtailing birthright citizenship to proceed.
On Thursday, the justice department’s acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, filed a request to the nation’s highest court, asking it to restrict orders issued by district judges in three states – Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington – that blocked Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship restrictions.
In her request, Harris called the Trump administration’s request a “modest” one, adding that the supreme court should “‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purpor[t] to cover every person in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power”.
“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” Harris continued, adding: “That sharp rise in universal injunctions stops the executive branch from performing its constitutional functions before any courts fully examine the merits of those actions, and threatens to swamp this court’s emergency docket.”
Thursday’s request from the justice department follows Trump’s executive order that he signed on his first day in office as part of his administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigration.
The executive order seeks to prevent children born in the US, but without at least one parent who is a lawful permanent resident or American citizen, from being eligible for US citizenship. The executive order, which targets children born to unauthorized immigrants and people with temporary immigrant statuses in the US, also prohibits federal agencies from issuing or recognizing documentation that prove US citizenship for such children.
According to the US constitution’s 14th amendment, all “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside”.
With eight lawsuits filed against Trump’s executive order, it is currently blocked nationwide. As part of her request, Harris said: “Making the universal injunctions here even more problematic, the injunctions micromanage the internal operations of the executive branch. The injunctions prohibit the executive branch not only from enforcing the citizenship order, but also from taking internal steps to implement it.”
Last month, a federal appeals court in San Francisco denied the Trump administration’s request to reinstate the birthright citizenship restrictions, with judge Danielle Forrest writing: “It is routine for both executive and legislative policies to be challenged in court, particularly where a new policy is a significant shift from prior understanding and practice.”
