WASHINGTON, D.C. — Washington Attorney General Nick Brown is in Washington, D.C. to hear the Supreme Court’s arguments on the Trump Administration’s executive order to end birthright citizenship.
Within the first few hours of his second term as President, one of the executive orders Trump signed looks to end birthright citizenship-- where, according to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, a person born on American soil to an undocumented person still has American citizenship.
Specifically, the 14th Amendment stipulates that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In the executive order, Trump argued that the phrase “jurisdiction thereof” meant that automatic citizenship did not apply to the children of undocumented immigrants, or people in the country temporarily.
In January, Brown filed a multi-state federal lawsuit challenging the order. The lawsuit says the President has no authority to override the Constitution and that “no constitutional provision or law empowers him to determine who should or should not be granted U.S. citizenship at birth.”
“Tomorrow [May 15], the Supreme Court will decide whether the federal judges who issued temporary injunctions against the administration’s birthright citizenship order had the authority to do so, and whether those injunctions should be limited to the states that joined the litigation. It’s an absurd argument by the Trump Administration—the notion that you can be born in Washington State and enjoy all the rights and privileges of American citizenship but lose those same rights if you’re born just twenty minutes away across a state line. I look forward to the Court reaffirming the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship and ensuring that every child born on U.S. soil is protected equally," Washington Attorney General Nick Brown wrote on X.
It is unusual for the Supreme Court to hold a hearing in May, and there is no indication of when it may rule.
The current Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority.
You can listen to the arguments here.
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