The Post & Email
ADMINISTRATION QUOTES VATTEL; ALL CITE WONG KIM ARK On April 17, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its scheduling of oral argument for May 15 to resolve legal challenges to President Donald Trump‘s January 20, 2025 executive order rescinding the practice of awarding citizenship to virtually anyone born within the United States.
Numerous cases filed just after the executive order was issued resulted in three temporary “nationwide” injunctions from federal courts in the Western District of Washington, the District of Massachusetts and District of Maryland.
The Trump administration has appealed each injunction to the high court, which, rather than acting on the appeals individually, scheduled a one-hour hearing for May 15 at 10:00 a.m.
The Cases
WashingtonThe Washington lawsuit involves four state plaintiffs — Illinois, Arizona, Washington and Oregon — claiming the executive order violates the 14th Amendment and Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Terming it the “Citizenship Stripping Order,” the states filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to preclude its implementation.
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MassachusettsThe Massachusetts case was filed by 18 states, the city of San Francisco and the District of Columbia. “Plaintiffs bring this action to protect their states, localities, and residents from the President’s flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage,” the lawsuit begins. “The principle of birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment unambiguously and expressly confers citizenship on ‘[a]ll persons born’ in and ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States. More than 125 years ago, the Supreme Court confirmed that this entitles a child born in the United States to noncitizen parents to automatic citizenship. See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898). Congress subsequently codified that understanding in the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. § 1401). And the Executive Branch has long recognized that any attempt to deny citizenship to children based on their parents’ citizenship or immigration status would be ‘unquestionably unconstitutional.’”
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MarylandA suit filed by five expectant women represented by CASA, Inc. of Maryland and Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, Inc. of New York, claimed on page 4, “The 14th Amendment’s language is clear. Over a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause means that people born in the United States are U.S. citizens at birth without regard to their immigration status, except for children born to foreign diplomats, on foreign ships, to occupying armies, or to Indian tribes.1 See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 693 (1898). The Court has adhered to that understanding time and again in the ensuing decades.”
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The Executive OrderRelying heavily on the text of the 14th Amendment, the executive order, titled, “PROTECTING THE MEANING AND VALUE OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP,” reads, in substantial part:
Section 1. Purpose. The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift. The Fourteenth Amendment states: “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.” That provision rightly repudiated the Supreme Court of the United States’s shameful decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), which misinterpreted the Constitution as permanently excluding people of African descent from eligibility for United States citizenship solely based on their race.
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Much Much More:
https://www.thepostemail.com/2025/04/24/scotus-to-hear-oral-argument-on-nationwide-injunctions-birthright-citizenship-may-15/
