A federal appeals court has ruled against the Trump administration and its effort to end birthright citizenship in some cases, handing another legal defeat to President Donald Trump.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston upheld a district court injunction on Friday that blocked the administration from enforcing the president’s January executive order on the citizenship issue.
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On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order that redefined the interpretation of birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The order detailed two scenarios in which a child would no longer automatically receive U.S. citizenship if born on U.S. soil.
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The first case would be if the mother is “unlawfully present” in the U.S. and the father is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident at the time of the birth. The second case would be if the mother is in the U.S. legally but only on a temporary basis, and if the father is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.
The executive order has been widely opposed by Democrats and immigration advocates. Friday’s ruling marks the fifth federal court decision that issued or upheld an order blocking the order from taking effect.
“Our nation’s history of efforts to restrict birthright citizenship — from Dred Scott in the decade before the Civil War to the attempted justification for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act in Wong Kim Ark — has not been a proud one,” the court wrote in the 100-page ruling.
The court continued, “The ‘lessons of history’ thus give us every reason to be wary of now blessing this most recent effort to break with our established tradition of recognizing birthright citizenship and to make citizenship depend on the actions of one’s parents rather than — in all but the rarest of circumstances — the simple fact of being born in the United States.”
As the Trump administration has continued to be hit with legal defeats in its effort to curtail birthright citizenship, the administration is now turning its attention to the Supreme Court.
Just one week before the appeals court ruling, the Department of Justice filed a pair of petitions asking the justices to hear appeals on its order and determine if the executive order is lawful under the 14th Amendment.
If the justices agree to hear the petitions, this would be the second time the Supreme Court has taken up the birthright citizenship issue.
In a 6-3 June decision, the High Court moved to limit the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, ruling that district courts had exceeded their power.
“Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,” Barrett wrote for the majority at the time. “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”