In mid-May, the Supreme Court took the bench for a rare emergency oral argument, which had been tacked on to the end of the term.
The case focused on whether a single federal judge had the power to freeze a federal policy for the entire country, a long-simmering debate.
Despite the dry-sounding legal issue, the case involved something urgent: an executive order signed by President Trump on his first day back in office. In fewer than 800 words, and with a signature scrawled in thick Sharpie, the president declared an end to birthright citizenship, the principle that children born in the United States are citizens.
Birthright citizenship is rooted in English common law. It was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution in 1868 in the 14th Amendment, which reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
In one of its most notorious cases, Dred Scott, the Supreme Court in 1857 denied citizenship to the descendants of slaves, helping prompt the Civil War. The 14th Amendment erased that finding and expanded citizenship to almost anyone born in the United States.
In 1898, the justices again considered birthright citizenship in the case of Wong Kim Ark. Mr. Wong was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the child of parents who were part of a wave of Chinese laborers who came to the United States in the mid-1800s. Officials argued that birthright citizenship did not apply to him because he and his parents were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States when he was born. The Supreme Court disagreed.
Since then, courts have maintained an expansive view of citizenship. The few legislative efforts launched over the years aimed at denying the status to children whose parents were not legal residents floundered.
Mr. Trump has long been critical of the guarantee of birthright citizenship, and raised the idea of ending it during his first presidential campaign in 2015.
Mr. Trump’s views have been considered on the legal fringe, largely pushed by scholars connected to the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. One of them is John Eastman, a former law clerk of Justice Clarence Thomas and a legal architect of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But the president’s interest has helped bring the idea to the center of the Republican Party.
Even though he did not move to end birthright citizenship during his first term, Mr. Trump made it a priority in his second term, despite certain legal challenges.
After he signed the executive order, a coalition of 22 Democratic-led states, immigrant advocacy groups and pregnant women concerned that their children might not automatically be granted citizenship sued to block the order. One federal judge in Seattle, John C. Coughenour, issued a nationwide block on Mr. Trump’s executive order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.” Other federal judges in Maryland and Massachusetts issued similar pauses.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in. But it did not ask the justices to consider whether the executive order was lawful. Instead, the administration made what it called a “modest” request to allow the executive order to be implemented in states that had not challenged it.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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