Latest news with #ProtectingtheMeaningandValueofAmericanCitizenship
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What's at Stake as Trump's Assault on Birthright Citizenship Heads to the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over President Donald Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship on Thursday. Trump signed the order, 'Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,' on the first day of his second term, but it has since been halted by nationwide injunctions issued by three separate federal district courts. The Supreme Court is taking up the issue after the Trump administration filed emergency appeals asking the justices to narrow the injunction orders so the policy could move forward in some capacity while the issue is battled out in courts around the country. Twenty-two states have sued over the ostensibly unconstitutional executive order, which seeks to end the practice of granting citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. Rolling Stone spoke with legal experts Christopher M. Lapinig and Christopher W. Schmidt about the significance of the Supreme Court's decision to hear oral arguments, the merits of the cases challenging the order, and the broader impact of the Trump administration's attack on the 14th Amendment. Lapinig is an attorney with Asian Law Caucus, co-counsel alongside American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Immigrants' Rights Project, State Democracy Defenders Fund, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and others on New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support, et al v. Donald J. Trump, et al (this birthright citizenship case is separate from those the Supreme Court is convening over on May 15). Schmidt is a law professor and co-director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States at Chicago Kent College of Law and a research professor at the American Bar Foundation. It's unclear exactly which questions the Supreme Court will take up on Thursday. But the oral arguments will likely have less to do with the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, and more to do with judicial authority and a contentious issue that has affected both parties in recent administrations: how lower courts can issue nationwide injunctions essentially inhibiting a president from instituting policies nationwide. The decision on that issue would not only impact these birthright citizenship cases, but the hundreds of other lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's actions that are in the pipeline. Here's what else is at stake: The 14th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868, is pretty cut and dry regarding birthright citizenship: '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.' It has long been widely interpreted that anyone born on U.S. soil is an American citizen, regardless of the citizenship of the child's parents. 'It essentially was part of the efforts to make sure that slavery would not happen again, or anything resembling slavery would not happen again. And so the drafters of the 14th Amendment were abolitionists, right? They were anti-slavery, and they created this language with the idea of anti-subordination in mind,' Lapinig says. 'And what that means is essentially that they wanted to make sure that no person in the United States would be subordinated or relegated to second-class citizens or something else by virtue of their race or their ethnicity or national origin.' Drafters built 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' into the amendment's language. Lapinig says they 'contemplated that birthright citizenship should not extend to invaders, for example,' but that 'it's otherwise clear from the sort of discussions leading up to the enactment of the 14th Amendment that, of course, the 14th Amendment was to make sure that children of formerly enslaved people would be citizens by birth.' 'They also made clear,' he continues, 'that they knew that, for example, children of immigrants from places like China or anywhere else would also be U.S. citizens by birth if they were born in the United States.' The 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' line in the 14th Amendment is the key to the Trump administration's argument. 'They are arguing that the categories of people that they are attempting to exclude are not subject to jurisdiction,' Schmidt says. 'Their argument being that if you're not legally in the country, [or] temporarily, you're not, in some sense, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Now, even as I talk through that, it doesn't seem to really resonate in any meaningful way when people think about why you're subject to jurisdiction.' 'That was put in there to exclude people like someone born to a foreign diplomat who is subject to a different set of rules, even when they're in the United States, perhaps also Native American populations who are not fully subject to the control of the United States. So, there were certain groups of people who were thought to fit in that category at the time.' Both the text and the amendment's history are not favorable to Trump's argument. ''Subject to jurisdiction' basically means, does the United States sovereign have control, or can it regulate you, like it can regulate other people? And whether you're in the country legally or not, you're subject to the sovereign authority of the United States, which is why [the jurisdiction argument] just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, just in terms of the language,' Schmidt says. 'Also, for those people who studied immigration policy around the time of the 14th Amendment … the categories of 'legal,' 'illegal,' 'documented,' 'undocumented' — they were not categories that had much or any meaning at the time. The process by which someone would enter the country or leave the country was not nearly as regulated … And there wasn't this sort of idea that there is a separate category of people who are undocumented or illegal immigrants.' He adds: 'This is a provision of the Constitution that has always struck me as being more clear than much of the Constitution.' Notably, beyond the text and history arguments when interpreting the Constitution against Trump's executive order, there is also strong precedent against it with the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the justices decided 6-2 in favor of Wong Kim Ark. In the New Hampshire lawsuit, along with the other cases involving birthright citizenship, lawyers cite the 1898 case. Wong Kim Ark was a Chinese-American cook born in San Francisco in 1873. 'His parents, who were from China, because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, were ineligible to be U.S. citizens,' Lapinig says. Wong Kim Ark left the U.S. for China to see his family and his wife, whom he married on a previous trip ('Chinese immigration, especially Chinese women, were restricted' at the time, Lapinig says), but when he returned home to San Francisco, he was denied reentry by immigration officials on the claim that he was not a U.S. citizen, despite being born in San Francisco. He and his lawyers argued he was a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which sided with Wong Kim Ark. The ruling 'enshrined the right to birthright citizenship for all babies, all children born in the United States to this day,' says Lapinig. In addition to the pretty straightforward legal precedent against Trump's executive order, Schmidt notes that it's 'just established practice' that birthright citizenship applies to anyone born in the U.S., even if their parents are undocumented, and that 'Congress has been operating under the assumption this is the proper reading of the 14th Amendment for generations.' The Supreme Court's move to hear oral arguments is unusual because typically when the Supreme Court schedules oral arguments, it's after granting certiorari, meaning the court has agreed to review a decision from a lower court. 'The striking thing about the granting of oral arguments in the birthright citizenship cases is that they did not grant certiorari in any of the cases, nor did they identify a question presented that they're going to be talking about,' Schmidt says. There are a couple of topics that could be addressed on May 15. The first is the one Trump brought to the court: the validity of nationwide injunctions, which the district courts involved in the cases issued after deeming the executive order likely unconstitutional. 'This is what the Trump administration went to the court saying: 'We want you to lift these nationwide injunctions, because it's an abuse of judicial authority,'' says Schmidt. 'So, it's highly likely that the court will want to hear some discussion simply about that problem, which certainly is sharply put into focus with this case, but it actually transcends this particular case. It's just about the scope of district court authority on these national issues.' The other topic is the substantive question of the lawsuits, which is unlikely to be discussed on Thursday as the administration only asked the court, so far, to narrow the nationwide injunctions. The question is a big one, though: 'The constitutionality of a redefinition of birthright citizenship away from what's been understood for over 100 years, to make it more narrowly applied, namely, at least according to the Trump executive order, to not apply to people who were born in the United States but to parents who are not in the United States with legal documentation or are only here temporarily,' Schmidt says. Babies born after Feb. 19, 2025 to parents who do not have U.S. citizenship or permanent immigration status in the U.S. are the target of the executive order, should it stand. It is unclear how this would be enforced if the courts do ultimately allow it to stand. 'Anyone that is even on a visa that, in theory, could lead to a green card, like, say, an H-1B visa, which is a very common sort of skilled worker visa that is issued in the United States [would be vulnerable],' Lapinig says. 'If at that point, they're only put only on an H-1B and have not quite obtained legal permanent residents in the United States, then the executive order would consider their children, their babies, born to be ineligible for their birthright citizenship.' Other visa holders, such as students, exchange visitors, tourists, athletes, and entertainers would also fall under this umbrella, as would Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, and people with humanitarian visas, among others. 'This is the president of the United States declaring what at least takes the form of an authoritative interpretation of the Constitution. So simply the significance of who is making the claim and the significance of how much the claim would affect people does seem to indicate that allowing lower court decisions to do the work for the Supreme Court … it has always struck me as unlikely,' says Schmidt. There is also likely a strategic reason the Supreme Court might want to take this case up. While the GOP-controlled court may give Trump some wins, like it did with the Trump immunity case last July, it's likely 'the court really wants to assert that it's not just simply a rubber stamp for the Trump administration, and it wants to find opportunities to also assert its role in this whole process,' Schmidt says. 'So therefore, it wants to find some Trump administration initiatives to strike down, and this has always struck me as easy pickings. The law is so clear, so well-established, and the impact of this on American society would be very disruptive, quite radical, quite harmful.' 'It is just head spinning, the amount of activity coming out of the executive branch that is constitutionally and legally questionable, and the burden that's going to place on the courts,' Schmidt adds. 'It's a question about whether the courts are going to be spread so thin with these really major issues, and whether they want to be a little strategic about which cases they're going to take on. … They might just allow the lower courts to take this one. I still don't think that's likely, but it is an option.' Should Trump's executive order be implemented as is, the policy would create an 'underclass of individuals,' says Lapinig, which is something the drafters of the 14th Amendment worked to combat. 'The 14th Amendment was truly an effort to make sure that slavery itself would not happen again in the United States, but also that nothing like slavery would happen again, as in that there would never be the creation and growth of an underclass of people in the United States that were denied off their race or ethnicity or ancestry, equal rights to others.' 'This executive order would create, dramatically, a large underclass of people in the United States that, in turn, would not be eligible for any public benefits, or [other] aspects of public support — and all Americans would be affected, because they are in your communities,' he adds. 'The fabric of every community in the United States would be affected in some way because there would be the presence of folks who would unfortunately be part of this underclass of people. And so those communities would have to — whether on an individual level or on a community level — deal with the ramifications of children who are or who have been, who will be excluded from membership among the ranks of U.S. citizens.' As for the New Hampshire v. Trump lawsuit, which was filed hours after Trump signed the birthright citizenship executive order on his first day in office on Jan. 20, Judge Joseph Laplante issued a preliminary injunction on Feb. 10. On April 10, Trump and his administration filed a notice of appeal. 'We are very confident in our lawsuit, in the legal merits of our lawsuit, and our position that this executive order is completely and flagrantly unconstitutional,' Lapinig says. 'We know that the law — has stood for as I mentioned over 120 years — is clearly on our side, and so we will just continue to litigate our lawsuit and do what we can to make sure that this executive order is never implemented.' More from Rolling Stone Jon Stewart Criticizes Trump for Taking Free Jet: 'He's Like the Reverse Oprah' Latin Music Festivals Scramble Amid Visa Uncertainty: 'It's Scary' Trump Is Trying to Take Control of Congress Through Its Library Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Time of India
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
US Supreme Court to shortly commence hearing on US birthright citizenship
AI generated image District courts blocked implementation of the EO Supreme Court's hearing begins on May 15 On Jan 20, 2025, US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order (EO), titled 'Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,' that ended birthright citizenship for children born in the US to non-citizen in its analysis had pointed out that the lakhs of Indians caught up in a decades-long queue for an employment-linked green card will be will be impacted going forward, as a child born in a family (thirty days from the date of the EO) where the mother is here lawfully but temporarily (eg: as a visitor or on a non-immigrant visa – be it a dependent visa like H-4 or even a work visa) and the 'father' is not a green card holder or US citizen will not get automatic American response to the EO, nearly 22 states and several civil rights groups filed lawsuits challenging its constitutionality. Several district courts issued nationwide injunctions preventing the implementation of the EO anywhere in the countryThe petitioners had challenged the longstanding interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to all individuals born on US soil, regardless of their parents' immigration US Supreme Court, in 1989 in the case of Wong Kim Ark had affirmed that children born in America to foreign nationals are indeed citizens under the executive order points out that the 14Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the US. It has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the US but not 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof'. In other words, it requires one of the parents to be a US green card holder or US citizen for the child to get birthright US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on May 15, 2025, regarding the legality of the EO and the scope of nationwide injunctions issued by the district a bipartisan political organization, in its policy brief points out that: The Trump administration isn't even defending its radical constitutional theory in the Supreme Court—likely because it knows the argument would fail—and instead focuses on the legality of nationwide injunctions. Such injunctions have been at the center of political debate in recent years across a variety of policy argue that these injunctions are necessary to give complete relief to the plaintiffs and also to prevent harm to individuals beyond those named in the cases, especially in cases involving the federal Constitution. Critics argue that such injunctions go beyond the appropriate authority of district court judges and unlawfully limit the authority of the Executive adds that, while it is perfectly reasonable for the Supreme Court to rule on the legal principles governing issuance of nationwide injunctions, limiting the relief in this case could result in nationwide chaos and enable the widespread infringement of core constitutional rights.
Miami Herald
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Despite Trump's claims, birthright citizenship has been settled by Supreme Court
Some 75 days into his presidency, Donald Trump has not given up on one of his first acts — to end birthright citizenship with the 'Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship' executive order. But there lies the problem, which includes over a century of U.S. Supreme Court precedent recognizing birthright citizenship and the fact a president cannot rewrite the Constitution. While he can propose an amendment, Trump evidently prefers a faster route. On March 13th, after four federal courts enjoined the implementation of the executive order, the Trump administration petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to allow him to enforce it. But there are two problems with Trump's tactic: First, the executive order is blatantly unconstitutional, as the first court to consider the issue found. Second, the filing's procedural posture is a delay tactic that will resolve nothing. In terms of the procedural posture of the case, Trump urges the justices to block the injunctions issued by federal district judges in Seattle, Maryland and Massachusetts. Trump argues lower federal courts cannot stop enforcing a nationwide executive order. While this argument has some support from two of the nine Supreme Court justices, this procedural argument does not address the executive order's legality. Trump's team is wrong asserting that: ▪ The 14th Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the U.S. ▪ The 14th Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the U.S. but not 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' Indeed, every single U.S. Supreme Court decision considering the issue of birthright found all persons born in the U.S. are, in fact, U.S. citizens. The cases include Wong Kim Ark, Elk v. Wilkins, Perkins v. Elg and Afroyim v. U.S. citizens. The cases include Wong Kim Ark, Elk v. Wilkins, Perkins v. Elg, Afroyim v. RuskF and INS v Rios-Pineda. The Supreme Court in Afroyim prophetically rejected the very action Trump is trying to achieve with his executive order: One of the purposes of the 14th Amendment was to prevent both the executive and legislative branches of government from interfering with the concept of citizenship. More recently, the Court in Plyler v. Doe, rejected attempts like those being made by Trump, essentially stating that: Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is a 'person' that 'within its jurisdiction' confirms the understanding that the 14th Amendment's protection extends to anyone, citizen or stranger, who is subject to the laws of a state and reaches into every corner of a state's territory. These Court decisions should have ended the debate, but Trump's team argues because undocumented immigrants arrived by violating U.S. law, they are not subject to our laws. They argue that U.S. born children of the undocumented are by extension somehow not citizens. They look to the 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' language of the 14th Amendment to ascertain the 'original meaning of the term.' But the original meaning of 'subject to the jurisdiction' was intended by Congress to mean being capable to be punished by the U.S. And, of course, both the undocumented and their children are subject to our laws because they can be punished if they violate them. The most disturbing aspect of Trump's effort is it punishes children for wrongs of their parents, a proposition rejected by the Supreme Court in Plyler v. Doe: 'regulation directing the onus of a parent's misconduct against his children does not comport with fundamental conceptions of justice.' Indeed, not only do biblical references, such as Ezekiel 18, agree that children should not bear the sins of the father, a slew of federal courts have rejected punishing children for failures of their parents. Moreover, no president cannot rewrite the Constitution by executive order. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide this issue. If they act as politicians and are motivated by what are political calls to curb Latin-American immigration, then Trump, as well as future presidents, will be able to rewrite our Constitution with a stroke of a pen: a sad day for separation of powers, democracy and over a century of Supreme Court precedents. Ediberto Roman is a professor at the Florida International University College of Law.
