Supreme Court Conservatives Wrangle With Letting Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Restriction Go Into Effect

The arguments hinged on a procedural question about the powers of lower courts that conservatives appeared sympathetic to, but that could create a patchwork of citizenship across the country.

At least five conservative Supreme Court justices appeared supportive of arguments in favor of limiting how federal district courts can issue universal nationwide injunctions on executive branch policies, which would allow President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship to, at least temporarily, go into effect.

The Trump administration brought this case to the Supreme Court after dozens of federal district courts issued nationwide injunctions blocking Trump’s executive order, which would deny birthright citizenship to any child born to noncitizen parents in the United States. Instead of challenging the underlying legality or constitutionality of Trump’s order, the administration asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether district courts can issue universal nationwide injunctions at all.

This procedural question dominated arguments on Thursday, and it appeared that a majority of conservatives agreed, at least somewhat, with the Trump administration’s arguments against universal nationwide injunctions. If the court were to accept such an argument, it would allow Trump’s executive order rewriting the rules of birthright citizenship to go into effect for everyone except for the individual plaintiffs who sued and won at federal district courts.

While the justices often seemed uncertain on the ticky-tacky details, there seemed to be significant sympathy among the conservative justices for some form of restrictions on nationwide injunctions, which, in the absence of any clarification or an intentionally narrow ruling, would allow the birthright citizenship order to go into effect.

Such a decision could create a patchwork of citizenship throughout the country for the first time since the end of the Civil War and make it far more difficult for the children of noncitizens to bring suit to obtain the citizenship owed to them by birth under the Constitution.