Trump administration seeks Supreme Court review on birthright citizenship limits

The Trump administration has moved the United States Supreme Court to take up a controversial challenge over birthright citizenship, according to reports.

The Justice Department in a filing on Friday reportedly urged the justices to review two lower court rulings that blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at restricting automatic citizenship for children born in the country to non-citizen parents.

Trump had signed the order on his first day back in office in January. 

The US Supreme Court had earlier ruled that district judges lack the authority to grant nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration’s executive order to effectively end birthright citizenship. 

Trump signed the order hours after taking office on January 20. It directed federal agencies to halt recognition of citizenship for children born after February 19, if neither parent is a US citizen nor a permanent resident.

Over 20 states and civil rights groups immediately filed lawsuits challenging the order, calling it blatantly ‘unconstitutional’.

The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution states that “all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Trump’s executive order argued that the 14th Amendment “has always” excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”.

Federal judges in the states of Washington, Maryland and Massachusetts had issued nationwide injunctions halting implementation of Trump’s executive order.

(with inputs from syndicated feed)