Trump Challenges Birthright Citizenship: Appeals to Supreme Court Amid Nationwide Legal Battles

On Thursday, the Trump Administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene to allow for a limited version of its executive order that bans birthright citizenship to be implemented. This was in response to three nationwide injunctions filed in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington State.

The judges in these states blocked the order that President Donald Trump signed his first day as president, banning birthright citizens.

The ruling was blocked in all three courts, which is what lawyers from the Trump administration claimed when they filed their Supreme Court document.

In the court filing Thursday, acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris said the courts had gone too far and asked the Supreme Court justices to limit the scope of the rulings to cover only individuals directly impacted by the relevant courts. 

“These cases, which challenge the January 20, 2025, Executive Order of the President concerning birthright citizenship, raise constitutional issues with significant ramifications on border security,” Harris wrote.

“But at this stage, the government comes to this Court with a ‘modest’ request: while the parties litigate weighty merits questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purpor[t] to cover every person in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power.”

The order sought to clarify that the 14th Amendment states: “All people born in or naturalized within the United States are subject to their jurisdiction and citizens of both the United States as well as the state where they reside.”

The language proposed by the Trump Administration, which was then blocked, clarified the fact that those born of illegal immigrants or to legal but temporary nonimmigrant visa holders are not American citizens.

No court has yet sided with Trump’s executive orders that seek to ban birthright citizenship. However, multiple district courts blocked its implementation.

For its part, the Department of Justice has tried to describe the order as “an integral part of President Trump’s larger effort to fix the United States’ immigration system and address the continuing crisis at the Southern Border.”

The original date for the executive order Trump signed to take effect was Feb. 19. It would have affected the hundreds of thousands of children born annually in the U.S.

In court documents, more than 22 U.S. state and immigration rights groups sued to stop the Trump Administration’s ban on birthright citizenship. They argued that the executive order was both “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional”.

States have also claimed that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to those born in America and who are naturalized there.

The U.S. is one of roughly 30 countries where birthright citizenship is applied.