Conservative justices object to how lower courts are blocking Trump, but birthright citizenship case presents deeper issues

The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Thursday with what it called a “modest” request in its effort to end the constitutional right of birthright citizenship.

The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Thursday with what it called a “modest” request in its effort to end the constitutional right of birthright citizenship. Yet over two-and-a-half hours of arguments, the ramifications of President Donald Trump’s gambit appeared anything but modest. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal, voiced concern for “thousands of children who are going to be born without citizenship papers that could render them stateless.” And some justices on both sides of the ideological divide appeared wary of the Trump administration request to immediately lift court orders preventing it from enforcing his executive order anywhere in the United States – yet wait months to confront the merits of his reversal of the 14th Amendment’s birthright promise. “The president is violating an established – not just one but, by my count, four established Supreme Court precedents,” Sotomayor said. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, observed that the government often brings cases that challenge a lower court’s procedural move as well as the underlying constitutional issue.