US Appeals Court Hands Donald Trump A Loss In Birthright Citizenship Clash
For more than a century, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution had been interpreted by courts to mean that citizenship applies to nearly every baby born in the country.
A federal appeals court has denied a request by the US Justice Department to narrow a Seattle judge’s order blocking enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive action to restrict automatic birthright citizenship.
Four federal judges have ruled against the administration on the birthright citizenship issue — at least 10 lawsuits have been filed — and the Justice Department has appealed three of those decisions so far. Wednesday’s order from a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals marked the first setback for Trump in this next phase of the legal clash.
The Justice Department had argued that while the case is pending, the injunction should only apply to two individuals who are part of the case, not the whole country or even the four states that sued. 9th Circuit Judges William Canby and Milan Smith, appointed by Presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, wrote in a two-paragraph order that the government wasn’t entitled to that immediate court intervention because it failed to show it was likely to win the appeal.
Judge Danielle Forrest, appointed during Trump’s first term, wrote separately to say that she was denying the request for a different reason: she didn’t think the government proved it would face “serious risk of irreparable harm” if it couldn’t immediately enforce the new policy.
The circumstances didn’t “demonstrate an obvious emergency where it appears that the exception to birthright citizenship urged by the government has never been recognized by the judiciary” and where there were “contrary” executive branch interpretations of the issue in the past, she wrote.
For more than a century, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution had been interpreted by courts to mean that citizenship applies to nearly every baby born in the country. Trump’s executive action would deny it to children born to parents who are illegally in the US or on non-permanent visas to work, study or visit.
A Justice Department spokesperson and representative of the Washington State attorney general’s office, which is leading the Seattle case, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
