Washington – The Supreme Court gave a skeptical hearing on Thursday to a lawyer from President Trump who appealed decisions that blocked his plan to deny citizens to newborns whose parents were in this country illegally or temporarily.
None of the judges spoke in favor of Trump's plan to restrict the citizenship of birth rights, and several were openly skeptical.
“Each court is ruling against him,” said Judge Elena Kagan. “There will not be much disagreement about this.”
If your plan enters into force, “thousands of children will be born and become apátra us,” Judge Sonia Sotomayor said.
But Thursday's hearing was dedicated to a procedural question raised by the Administration: Can a single federal judge issue a national order to block the president's plan?
Shortly after Trump issued his executive order to limit the citizenship of birth law, federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and the state of Washington declared that it was not constitutional and blocked its application throughout the country.
In response, Trump's lawyers asked the Court to control the “epidemic” of national orders delivered by district judges.
It is a problem that has divided the Court and has brought the democratic and republican administrations.
Trump's lawyers argued that, for procedural reasons, the judges survived their authority. But it is also procedurally unusual for a president to try to review the Constitution through an executive order.
Thursday's audience did not seem to give a consensus about what to do.
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh said that the plaintiffs should be obliged to submit a collective action claim if they want to win a broad decision. But others said that would lead to delays and would not solve problems.
Judge Neil M. Gorsuch said he was looking for a way to decide quickly. “How do we get to merits quickly?” asked.
One possibility was to make the court more information and perhaps a second hearing to decide the fundamental question: Can Trump act on his own review of the interpretation of the fourteenth amendment?
Shortly after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Congress wrote the amendment 14, which begins with the words: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of it are citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside.”
Before that time, Americans were citizens of their states. In addition, the Supreme Court in the infamous decision of Dred Scott said that blacks were not citizens of their states and that they could not become citizens, even if they lived in a free state.
The amended constitution established American citizenship as a birth right. The only people who were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the laws of the United States were foreign diplomats and their families and, in the nineteenth century, the Indians who “were not taxed” and were treated as citizens of their tribal nations.
However, Congress changed that rule in 1924 and extended the citizenship of birth law to the Native Americans.
Since 1898, the Supreme Court agreed that the citizenship of birth law extended to the native children of foreign migrants living in this country. The Court then said “the law had established the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth, despite the alienation of the parents.”
The decision affirmed the citizens of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco in 1873 of Chinese parents living and worked there, but were not US citizens.
But several conservative law professors have played the notion that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States simply means that the people living here are subject to the laws here.
Instead, they say that it refers more to people who owe their undivided loyalty to this country. If so, they argue that it does not extend widely to illegal immigrants or the students and tourists who are temporarily here.
On January 20, Trump issued an executive order that proclaims that amendment 14 does not “extend citizens universally to all those born within the United States.” He said it would be a policy of the United States not to recognize citizens for newborns if the child's mother or father “was not a citizen of the United States or permanent legal resident at the time of the birth of said person.”
Immigrant rights groups demanded on behalf of several pregnant women, and 22 states and several cities joined.
The judges did not waste their time in declaring the unconstitutional Trump order. They said that their proposed restrictions violated the federal law and the precedent of the Supreme Court, as well as the simple words of the 14th amendment.
In mid -March, Trump's lawyers sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court with “a modest request.” Instead of deciding the “important constitutional questions” that involve the citizenship of birth law, they urged the judges to control the practice of district judges that transmit orders nationwide.
They have “reached epidemic proportions since the beginning of the current administration,” they said.
A month later, and without more explanation, the court agreed to hear arguments based on that request.
The judges are likely to deliver a decision in Trump vs. House, but may not get until the end of June.
