Trump Requests Supreme Court to Review Birthright Citizenship Ban
White House Claims Nationwide Injunctions Blocking Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order Are Too Broad
President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on January 20, 2025. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)On Thursday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to step in and allow a more limited version of his executive order banning birthright citizenship to proceed. The request challenges three nationwide injunctions issued by courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington state.
Judges in those states swiftly blocked the president’s order on his first day in office, which sought to end birthright citizenship. All three courts issued nationwide injunctions, a move the Trump administration argues is too expansive.
In the Supreme Court filing, acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris stated that the courts overstepped and urged the justices to restrict the injunctions to only those individuals directly affected by the rulings.
Earlier, the Ninth Circuit rejected Trump’s attempt to reinstate the birthright citizenship order.
“These cases—challenging the President’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order on birthright citizenship—raise significant constitutional questions with far-reaching implications for securing the border,” Harris wrote.
“But at this stage, the government brings a 'modest' request to this Court: While the parties litigate these important merit issues, the Court should 'restrict the scope' of several preliminary injunctions that 'purport to cover every person in the country,' limiting those injunctions to only those individuals within the courts’ jurisdiction.”
The executive order in question aimed to clarify the 14th Amendment, which 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."
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The language proposed by the Trump administration, which was later blocked by the courts, aimed to clarify that individuals born to parents who are in the U.S. illegally or those on temporary non-immigrant visas would not be granted citizenship by birthright.
To date, no court has supported the Trump administration’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, with multiple district courts blocking its implementation.
The Department of Justice has framed the executive order as a crucial part of President Trump’s broader efforts to overhaul the U.S. immigration system and address the ongoing crisis at the southern border.
The order, initially scheduled to take effect on February 19, would have impacted the hundreds of thousands of children born in the U.S. each year.
Supreme Court justices attend President Donald Trump's inauguration at the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)More than 22 U.S. states, along with immigrants' rights groups, swiftly filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to block the birthright citizenship ban. In their court filings, they argued that the executive order is both unconstitutional and "unprecedented."
