The Supreme Court will decide whether Trump’s citizenship order violates the Constitution

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

The justices will hear Trump’s appeal of a lower court ruling that struck down citizenship restrictions. It has not entered into force anywhere in the country.

He watches: The history and legacy of birthright citizenship in the United States

The issue will be discussed in the spring. A final ruling is expected by early summer.

The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on Jan. 20, the first day of his second term, is part of his administration’s broad immigration crackdown. Other measures include increased immigration enforcement in many cities and invocation for the first time in peacetime of the 18th century Enemy Alien Act.

The Republican administration faces multiple judicial challenges, and the Supreme Court has sent mixed signals in its emergency orders. Judges effectively halted the use of the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without court hearings. But the Supreme Court allowed sweeping immigration stops to resume in the Los Angeles area after a lower court blocked the practice of stopping people solely on the basis of race, language, occupation or location.

The justices are also considering the administration’s emergency appeal to allow National Guard troops to be deployed to the Chicago area for immigration enforcement actions. A lower court has blocked this publication indefinitely.

Birthright citizenship is Trump’s first immigration policy to reach the court for a final ruling. His order would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to every person born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying power.

In a series of decisions, lower courts struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or potentially so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.

However, the Supreme Court did not rule out other injunctions that could have nationwide implications, including class action lawsuits and those brought by states. The judges at the time did not decide whether the basic citizenship system was constitutional.

Every lower court that heard the case concluded that Trump’s order violated or was likely to violate the Fourteenth Amendment, which was intended to ensure that black people, including former slaves, had citizenship. Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules.

The case under review comes from New Hampshire. A federal judge in July blocked the citizenship order in a class action lawsuit involving all children who would be affected.

The administration also asked the justices to review the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. That court also ruled in July that a group of Democratic-led states that sued over Trump’s order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent problems that birthright citizenship might cause in some states but not others. The justices took no action in the Ninth Circuit case.

The administration asserted that children of non-citizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are therefore not entitled to citizenship.

“The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to grant citizenship to newly freed slaves and their children—not … to the children of aliens illegally or temporarily in the United States,” wrote the administration’s chief Supreme Court lawyer, Dr. John Sawyer, in urging the Supreme Court to review.

Twenty-four Republican-led states and 27 Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, support the administration.