On Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to overturn multiple nationwide injunctions issued by lower courts against President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship.
Chief Judge David Barron, who previously served as former President Barack Obama’s first acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010, handed down the decision.
“We do not address the government’s appeal of the preliminary injunction itself,” Barron stated in the 32-page ruling released Tuesday. “We address only the government’s stay motion, which asks us to decide whether the District Court’s order granting a preliminary injunction should be stayed while this court takes up an interlocutory appeal of that injunction.
“Based on the arguments that the government presents in support of the stay motion, we deny it.”
As a result, Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship will remain blocked while the case proceeds through the courts.
The administration had argued that the coalition of 18 states that brought the lawsuit against the order did not have the legal standing to challenge it.
However, Barron ruled that the government failed to provide a “strong showing” that the states lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution.
Judges Julie Rikelman and Seth R. Aframe concurred with the ruling.
At the core of the legal battle is the interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1868 following the Civil War and the controversial Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott case. That ruling had determined that Scott, an enslaved man, was not considered a citizen despite living in a free state.
The Trump administration has argued that children born to noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore should not automatically receive citizenship.
In contrast, attorneys representing the states maintain that the 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship and that this interpretation has been upheld since its adoption. They cite the 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which ruled that nearly all children born on U.S. soil—except those whose parents were diplomats, those born to enemies during wartime occupation, those born on foreign vessels, or those belonging to sovereign Native American tribes—are entitled to citizenship.
Trump had issued the executive order on his first day in office as part of his promise to reassess birthright citizenship. He argued that undocumented immigrants should not be able to gain legal status in the U.S. simply by giving birth to a child on American soil. The former president has also expressed strong opposition to “chain migration,” which he believes allows temporary or undocumented immigrants to secure permanent residency by having children in the country.
“The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” the executive order, issued on January 20, stated. “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.'”
“Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States:
(1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or,
(2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
Democratic state attorneys general have pushed back against the Trump administration’s executive order, filing lawsuits in 18 states to challenge its legality.
{Matzav.com}
