The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court for an emergency intervention Thursday limiting lower court rulings that are blocking President Trump’s plans to restrict birthright citizenship.
The Justice Department’s ask comes after three federal appeals courts blocked the administration from moving forward. The administration is not yet asking the justices to rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s order but instead is seeking to limit the lower rulings’ nationwide impact, insisting those courts went too far.
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“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,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in court filings.
Trump signed the executive order narrowing birthright citizenship on his first day back in the White House. It purports to limit the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship guarantee to exclude children born on U.S. soil to parents without permanent legal status.
The move has been met with 10 lawsuits that assert the administration’s interpretation runs up against longstanding Supreme Court precedent on the 14th Amendment. The other cases not yet at the high court remain in earlier stages.
Though the Trump administration’s new applications at the Supreme Court address those immigration issues, they mainly address lower courts’ decisions to block Trump’s order nationwide rather than merely the plaintiffs in a case, known as a “universal injunction.”
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“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current Administration,” the government wrote. “Courts have graduated from universal preliminary injunctions to universal temporary restraining orders, from universal equitable relief to universal monetary remedies, and from governing the whole Nation to governing the whole world.”
Though some of the Supreme Court justices have raised concerns about such injunctions, the court has declined previous opportunities to lay down firm rules over if they are permitted. Most recently, the court refused an invitation to do so from the Biden-era Justice Department in its waning days.
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This also marks the third time that the Trump administration has turned to the Supreme Court seeking an emergency intervention. The administration previously asked for an order greenlighting Trump’s firing of an independent agency leader, a request that was punted and ultimately denied as moot, and one permitting the administration to freeze roughly $2 billion in foreign aid payments, which was rejected in a 5-4 vote.
