Why Trumps Supreme Court challenge against birthright citizenship may not really be about birthright citizenship
When the Supreme Court hears arguments Thursday over President Trump’s challenge to automatic birthright citizenship, the immigration spat could take a backseat to a more contested legal question about the power of lower-court judges to rein in the executive branch.Earlier this year, lower courts in Washington, Massachusetts and Maryland slapped broad universal injunctions — nationwide pauses — that stopped Trump’s executive action to end birthright citizenship from taking effect.Back in March, the Trump administration pleaded with the high court and is hoping to use the birthright citizenship case to end “toxic and unprecedented” universal injunctions that have hampered a myriad of the president’s executive actions.“This is a funny test case, because the underlying law is so clear and because it’s sort of the same exact issue all across the country,” Gabriel Chin, a Martin Luther King Jr.
Professor of Law, and Director of Clinical Legal Education at the UC Davis School of Law, told The Post.“I’m actually a little surprised that the Supreme Court took it.”Many legal scholars, including Chin, believe the underlying merits of the Trump administration’s challenge against birthright citizenship are on shaky grounds because of the clear text of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.”A key objective behind the drafting of the 14th Amendment was to ensure that freed slaves obtained citizenship.
The Supreme Court previously backed the birthright citizenship interpretation in 1898.“The case against the executive order or in favor of universal birthright citizenship is extraordinarily strong from the text of the Constitution, which is clear, to the framers intent,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.She warned that if birthright citizenship gets overturned, it could have a significant impact on the roughly 3.6 million Americans...