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President Donald Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship is now at the Supreme Court. The overall legality of his policy isn’t at issue in this new appeal — rather, his administration is asking the justices to narrow the nationwide scope of lower court rulings blocking the policy from taking effect while litigation about its legality moves forward.
“These cases — which involve challenges to the President’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order concerning birthright citizenship — raise important constitutional questions with major ramifications for securing the border,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote to the high court on Thursday.
She continued: “But at this stage, the government comes to this Court with a ‘modest’ request: while the parties litigate weighty merits questions, the 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.”
Harris presented three separate but nearly identical applications covering three separate cases that went against Trump: in Maryland, Washington state and Massachusetts. “Three district courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington have issued overlapping nationwide injunctions at the behest of 22 States, two organizations, and seven individuals,” wrote Harris, who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. She cited opinions from Thomas and other Republican appointees disapproving of such injunctions.
“This Court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched,” Harris wrote, adding that the justices “should stay the district courts’ preliminary injunctions except as to the individual plaintiffs and the identified members of the organizational plaintiffs (and, if the Court concludes that States are proper litigants, as to individuals who are born or reside in those States).” She urged the court “at a minimum” to halt the injunctions “to the extent they prohibit agencies from developing and issuing public guidance regarding the implementation of the Order.”
Lower court judges haven’t seemed to think the underlying constitutional question is a close one. For example, Ronald Reagan appointee John Coughenour in Washington state called Trump’s bid to curb birthright citizenship “blatantly unconstitutional.” The judge, who’s been on the bench for decades, said he couldn’t recall “another case where the question presented is as clear as this one.”
The opposing parties in these cases will get to weigh in with their own legal filings to the justices.
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