The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to review the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, pushing the issue before the justices for the second time this year,
CNN reports.
Despite more than a century of understanding that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship on people born in the United States, the Trump administration told the Supreme Court in an appeal that notion was “mistaken” and that the view became “pervasive, with destructive consequences.”
“The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the administration’s top appellate attorney. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”
CNN reviewed a copy of the appeal, which has not yet been docketed at the high court.
While the Supreme Court handed down an important decision in June that dealt with birthright citizenship, that case was technically focused on a more procedural question of how much power lower courts had to stop a policy implemented by a president. A 6-3 majority of the court essentially limited – but did not completely rule out – the power of courts to block those policies.
That decision sent states and individuals who were challenging Trump’s birthright order scrambling to file new cases to shut down the birthright policy through other means, including class-action lawsuits. The Supreme Court implicitly allowed those other types of nationwide blocks to continue.
A series of new rulings have continued to keep Trump’s policy on hold, and the administration is now asking the justices to take up those cases to settle the issue once and for all.
The administration has long expressed confidence that the high court would approve Trump’s policy. But it’s not entirely clear whether four justices will ultimately vote in favor of hearing the cases, as is required.
