Court Rejects Trump Emergency Appeal of Birthright-Citizenship Ruling

Saying that courts have never recognized an exception to birthright citizenship, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the Trump administration's emergency request to undo the decision of a federal judge in Seattle, who had blocked the president's executive order, finding it unconstitutional, as have judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, Reuters reports. It was the first time an appellate court had weighed in on Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship, whose fate may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Appeals are underway already in two of the cases. In the Ninth Circuit case, a three-judge panel refused the emergency order and set the case for arguments in June.

Trump's order, signed on his first day back in the White House on January 20, directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States after Wednesday if neither their mother nor father was a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. Democratic state attorneys general, immigrant rights advocates and others have filed a series of lawsuits alleging that Trump's executive order violates the citizenship clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, which has long been understood to recognize that virtually anyone born in the United States is a citizen. They say the U.S. Supreme Court clearly ruled in 1898 in the case United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the 14th Amendment guarantees the right to birthright citizenship regardless of a child's parents' immigration status. If allowed to stand, Trump's order would for the first time deny more than 150,000 children born annually in the United States the right to citizenship, the state attorneys general say.