Emergency call
By Amy Howe
13 Mar 2025
16:37
Acting lawyer Sarah Harris came to court on Thursday afternoon. (Katie Barlow)
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to enforce an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, who ended Birthright -State Citizenship -the guarantee of citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States. In a trio with almost identical filing of acting lawyer Sarah Harris, the administration called on the judges to partially block preliminary injunctions issued by federal district judges in Seattle, Maryland and Massachusetts, which prevents the government from implementing Trump’s executive order throughout the country.
Harris claimed that the kind of nationwide (sometimes described as “universal”) injunctions issued in the three cases “violate constitutional boundaries of the court’s powers” and “compromise the executive branch’s ability to perform its functions.” “This court,” she wrote, “should declare that enough is enough before the district courts’ budding dependence on universal injunctions is further rooted.”
Instead, Harris called on the judges to strictly restrict the district judges’ orders to block the enforcement of the order only to a much smaller group: the individual plaintiffs in the three cases, the specific members of the groups that challenge the order identified in a complaint, and – if the court agrees that states have a legal right to contest the order – At least she added that the federal government should be able to take “internal steps to implement“The executive order while the trial continues, even if it cannot enforce it.
Birthright -State Citizenship was explicitly added to the Constitution in 1868, when the 14th amendment was adopted after the civil war. This change determines that “[a]LL persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and the State where they live. “The United States is one of approx. 30 countries, including nearby Canada and Mexico, offering automatic citizenship to anyone born there.
Under Trump’s executive order originally scheduled to take effect 30 days after he signed it, children born in the United States have not automatically eligible for citizenship if their parents are in this country either illegally or temporarily.
In a hearing at the end of January, senior -American district judge John Coughenour of Western District Washington, a Ronald Reagan named the executive order “obviously constitutional” and temporarily prevented the government from implementing the order for 14 days. During a hearing on February 6, Coughenour expanded this ban and called the Birthright Citizenship a “Basic Constitutional Right.”
A federal appeal in San Francisco rejected Trump’s plea to put Coughenour’s injunctions except with regard to the individual plaintiffs while its appeal is moving forward.
Judge Danielle Forrest, a Trump-appointed, explained in a coherent perception that even though the case had been properly traced, the Trump administration had not shown that this was the kind of “emergency that requires an immediate answer.” That was not enough, the front stated that Coughenour’s injunction is temporarily preventing the government from implementing the executive order. “It’s routine,” she wrote, “for both executive and regulatory policies to be challenged in court, especially where a new policy is a significant shift from prior understanding and practice.”
Forrest, who repeated some of the criticism of the Supreme Court’s use of its nut document, also suggested that the highly accelerated schedule warned against giving the government’s request right now. She claimed that “rapid decision -making risks erode public confidence. The judges are charged with reaching their decisions other than ideology or political preference. When deciding questions of considerable public importance and political controversy hours after we finish reading the last brief, we should not be surprised if the public questions whether we are politicians in disguise. “
In Maryland, US district judge Deborah Boardman issued a separate order on February 5, banning the Trump administration from enforcing on January 20 executing orders, while a trial brought by immigrants’ rights groups and more pregnant women is moving forward. Boardman, a Biden -Precised, observed at the end of a hearing that “no court in the country has ever approved the president’s interpretation. This court will not be the first. “
A divided panel for the US appeal for the 4th orbit rejected the government’s request to partially block Boardman’s decision. Judge Paul Niemeyer disseminated from this decision and called the Trump administration’s plea a “modest movement.”
And in Massachusetts, US district judge Leo Sorokin issued a nationwide order in a case brought by a group of 18 states, the District of Columbia and San Francisco. Sorokin justified that a more limited injunction that applies only to the states who challenged the executive order would be “inadequate” because of the prospects of pregnant women living in one state could cross state lines to give birth in another. The US Appeals Court for the 1st Circuit partially refused to put Sorokin’s decision on the break.
In three largely identical archives submitted on Thursday, Harris called on the judges to “correct the massive remedy of the court.” Over the past few years, several Justices – including Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – have criticized nationwide or universal injunctions and called on their colleagues to weigh their legality.
In January, the Biden administration asked the judges to weigh on the prosperity of nationwide injunctions as part of an emergency appeal seeking permission to enforce a federal law on anti-whitewashing while the government’s appeal is moving forward. The judges agreed to block a decision from a federal district judge who had prevented the government from enforcing the law throughout the United States, but they did not address the issue of nationwide injunctions.
In this case, Gorsuch wrote a separate statement stating that he would have resolved the questioning question “Definitely.”
Harris also claimed that the states who challenged the executive order do not have a legal right, known as standing, to bring their litigation. The states she argued, “simply cannot claim citizenship rights on behalf of individuals”, and they themselves are not damaged by the order which “does not require” them “to do or refrain from something, much less” exposes them to any penalty.
Harris characterized district courts -orders in the three Birthright Citizenship cases as “part of a broader trend.” Since Trump’s inauguration on January 20, she complained, “District Courts have repeatedly issued orders that the internal operation of the executive branch by banning the formulation of new policies.” But ”[y]Ears of Experience has shown that the executive branch cannot properly perform its functions if any judge can join anywhere every presidential election everywhere. The before universal injunctions are ‘eliminated root and branch’, “she concluded,” the better. “
This article was originally published on Howe on the field.
