Justices will hear arguments on Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on May 15 on the federal government’s request to be allowed to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States, which dates back to the post-Civil War era.

The court left in place orders by three federal judges that prohibit the government from enforcing the executive order anywhere in the country until it can hear oral arguments and rule on the Trump administration’s request.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provides that “[a]ll 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.” It was intended to overrule one of the Supreme Court’s most infamous decisions, its 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding (by a vote of 7-2) that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to the United States and sold as enslaved persons was not entitled to any protection from the federal courts because he was not a U.S. citizen.

In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Wong Kim Ark – who was born in San Francisco to parents of Chinese descent – that the 14th Amendment guarantees U.S. citizenship to virtually anyone born in this country. Writing for the six-justice majority, Justice Horace Gray explained that the 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 born here of resident aliens.”

When campaigning for his second term in office, Trump promised to try to end birthright citizenship. Shortly after his inauguration in January of this year, he made good on that pledge, issuing his executive order indicating that people born in the United States will not be entitled to citizenship if their parents are in this country illegally or temporarily.

The order was quickly the subject of legal challenges around the country. In Seattle, Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour in early February blocked the Trump administration from enforcing the executive order anywhere in the United States, calling birthright citizenship “a fundamental constitutional right.”

A federal appeals court in San Francisco turned down Trump’s request to limit Coughenour’s order to the individual plaintiffs named in the Seattle suit.

In Maryland, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman also temporarily barred the government from enforcing the order there, in a lawsuit brought by immigrants’ rights groups and several pregnant women. Boardman stressed that “no court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation.”