The U.S. Supreme Court is stepping into a fiery showdown over President Donald Trump’s daring push to reshape birthright citizenship
The justices convened behind closed doors on Friday to debate Trump’s executive order, the Associated Press reports.
Trump’s order aims to strip citizenship from children born in the U.S. to parents here without authorization or on temporary visas, a policy halted by lower courts nationwide.
The president issued this order on day one of his second term, kicking off a hardline immigration agenda with a bang.
This citizenship rule is just one piece of a larger enforcement puzzle, alongside intensified operations in urban centers and the unprecedented peacetime use of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act.
The Supreme Court has already intervened with emergency rulings, blocking rapid deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members without hearings while approving broad immigration stops in Los Angeles despite lower court objections over profiling.
Justices are also considering the administration’s urgent plea to send National Guard troops for enforcement in Chicago.
The deployment is currently frozen by a lower court’s indefinite block.
At the heart of this storm is Trump’s challenge to over a century of precedent tied to the 14th Amendment.
It has long ensured citizenship for nearly everyone born on American soil.
The administration contends that children of noncitizens aren’t under U.S. jurisdiction, thus ineligible for citizenship.
However, it’s a theory that’s sparked fierce legal pushback.
Lower courts, from the 9th Circuit in San Francisco to a federal judge in New Hampshire, have unanimously rejected the policy as likely unconstitutional.
They are pointing to the 14th Amendment’s post-Civil War purpose of securing citizenship for all born here.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer is pressing the Supreme Court to step in.
Sauer is arguing that lower court decisions “undermine our border security” by wrongly granting citizenship to many.
On the flip side, Cody Wofsy of the American Civil Liberties Union, leading the New Hampshire class-action fight, scoffs that the administration’s case has “arguments so flimsy” they barely stand up to scrutiny.
While the Supreme Court curbed nationwide injunctions earlier this year, it left wiggle room for blocks in class-action or state-led cases, allowing these lower court rulings to hold, for the moment.
If the justices agree to hear Trump’s appeal, a decision may come as soon as Monday.
Arguments could hit the docket in spring with a final ruling by early summer.
Until then, this policy sits in legal purgatory, a flashpoint in the ongoing battle over immigration and national identity, as the administration fights two key cases to advance its stance.
For now, the nation watches as the Court weighs whether to tackle this monumental issue, one that could redefine what it means to be American while balancing border control with constitutional bedrock.
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