Trump officials ask Supreme Court to uphold ban on birthright citizenship

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to carry out its ban on birthright citizenship, potentially setting up a major showdown over one of the most important and controversial elements of the president’s anti-immigration agenda.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed two petitions with the high court seeking to overturn injunctions by lower courts that found the policy was likely unconstitutional.

Trump signed the ban on his first day in office, and judges have repeatedly blocked it from taking effect. The order directs government agencies to stop issuing citizenship documentation to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally.

The 14th Amendment has long been read to confer citizenship on anyone born in the United States. An 1898 Supreme Court decision upheld that interpretation, but Sauer wrote in a filing with the high court that the president was trying to restore the “original meaning” of its citizenship clause.

“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,” Sauer wrote.

Sauer said the ban is part of Trump’s larger efforts to change the U.S. immigration system to combat what he said are “significant threats to national security and public safety” posed by illegal immigration.

Most experts have said Trump’s effort to do away with birthright citizenship is legally dubious, but the Supreme Court has overwhelmingly backed the president in a series of emergency rulings on various issues since he began his second term in January. In one such opinion issued Friday, the high court allowed the Trump administration to freeze more than $4 billion in funding for foreign aid.

In the birthright citizenship case, Sauer asked the court to take up the case during the term that begins next month, potentially allowing the court to issue a ruling by the summer. It’s unclear when the Supreme Court would decide to take up the case.

The birthright citizenship ban has been challenged a handful of times and has taken a circuitous route through the courts, but judges have ruled against it again and again. The two cases Trump is appealing to the Supreme Court originated in Washington and New Hampshire.

The day after Trump signed the executive order in January, Washington state and three other states sued in federal court. A federal judge in Washington granted a preliminary injunction that was upheld by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” Judge Ronald M. Gould wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by Judge Michael Daly Hawkins. Both were appointed to the federal bench by former President Bill Clinton.

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Trump appointee, dissented in part, saying the plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the case. He did not weigh in on the merits of the executive order.

In a second action, a group of individuals filed a class-action suit over the ban in federal court in New Hampshire in June. A federal judge issued a classwide preliminary injunction. The Trump administration has asked an appeals court to overturn that ruling, while also asking the Supreme Court to intervene.

Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship already went to the Supreme Court once in June in a third case, but the justices did not rule on the substance of the policy. Instead, the Trump administration used the case to pose the narrower question of whether lower federal courts have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions.

In a 6-3 ruling, the justices backed the Trump administration’s request to scale back the orders.

The birthright citizenship ban is not the only element of Trump’s immigration agenda before the Supreme Court. The Trump administration also filed an emergency request this week asking the justices to temporarily allow it to strip deportation protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.