The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to consider President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship.
Trump issued the executive order ending guaranteed citizenship for children of illegal aliens or migrants on temporary visas in January on his first day in office.
The Trump administration urged the justices to take up the case in September after lower courts held his order unconstitutional.
“The Clause was adopted to confer citizenship on the newly freed slaves and their children, not on the children of aliens temporarily visiting the United States or of illegal aliens,” the administration’s petition states.
Trump’s birthright citizenship order came before the justices last term, though they were not asked to decide its constitutionality. Instead, the administration asked the justices to consider whether lower courts can issue injunctions that block orders like it nationwide.
The Supreme Court held in June that “universal injunctions” likely exceed the authority granted to federal courts.
Trump’s order restores the original meaning of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, the administration argues, which only “extends to children who are ‘completely subject’ to the ‘political jurisdiction’ of the United States.”
“This Court’s earliest cases interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly rejected the notion that anyone born in United States territory, no matter the circumstances, is automatically a citizen so long as he is subject to U.S. law,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the petition.
Opponents argue that the Supreme Court already answered this question in its 1898 Wong Kim Ark ruling, where it held that “the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens.”
Sauer argued that the Wong Kim Ark ruling did not “decide the citizenship rights of children of illegal aliens and temporary visitors.”
The Supreme Court has not yet scheduled oral arguments but they will likely take place early next year.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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