The Trump administration filed a series of emergency appeals in the US Supreme Court on Thursday (local time), seeking permission to proceed with its plan to end birthright
citizenship.
In the appeals, the Trump administration contended that lower courts had gone too far in issuing orders blocking the policy and requested the court to restrict the impact of those orders.
Earlier in January, a federal judge termed his executive order “blatantly unconstitutional” and blocked its implementation. A few days later, a judge in Maryland stressed that
Trump’s plan “runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.”
Appeals courts have brushed aside the Trump administration’s request to halt lower court orders that imposed nationwide injunctions on an executive order he signed on January 20, the first day of his office.
Courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington have all issued orders blocking its enforcement at the request of more than 20 states, two immigrant rights groups and seven individual plaintiffs.
The Trump administration’s appeals to the Supreme Court do not deal directly with the constitutionality of the policy. However, it wants what the administration called a “modest” request to limit the scope of the injunctions. If the Supreme Court gives its nod to the request, it would allow the Trump administration to implement its executive order against people not covered by the pending litigation.
In its emergency appeals filed in the Supreme Court, the US Justice Department said, “Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration.”
