The Court didn’t fully block Trump… Is your baby’s birthright citizenship safe?
A divided Supreme Court has issued a ruling on President Trump’s proposed birthright restrictions, leaving open the possibility of major change.
The future of birthright citizenship for all individuals born in the United States remains unclear after a divided ruling from the Supreme Court on Friday.
President Donald Trump has tried to add new restrictions to birthright citizenship, potentially denying citizenship to the US-born children of people who came to the country illegally. Many legal scholars have argued that this effort is in contradiction of the 14th Amendment.
On January 20, on his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order entitled ‘Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,’ which sought to add the new restriction to citizenship. The order, not passed by Congress, has been subject to countless legal challenges and the Trump administration was seeking to get a blanket ban on those challenges.
On Friday the conservative led Court announced that it had voted 6-3, along ideological lines, to approve the request from the Trump White House to limit those injunctions against the changes.
However the Court’s majority opinion did not make a ruling on the validity of Trump’s executive order. It simply ruled that federal courts have only limited powers when it comes to issuing nation-wide blocks on presidential actions.
“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” it reads. “The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
In terms of dissension, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued: “The court’s decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the government to bypass the Constitution.”
Following the Supreme Court decision, the issue now returns to the lower courts who have the opportunity to tailor their rulings to comply with Friday’s majority opinion. Trump’s proposed policy cannot go in to effect for another 30 days.
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