WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Trump v. CASA, Trump v. Washington, and Trump v. New Jersey, cases in which the Court is considering the Trump Administration’s request to partially stay preliminary injunctions blocking its executive order that purports to limit birthright citizenship to children who have at least one parent who is a citizen or is lawfully admitted for permanent residence, CAC Equal Justice Works Fellow Anna Jessurun issued this reaction:

While the oral argument focused on the remedial questions about the scope of the lower courts’ injunctions, the discussion of the merits made clear that the Executive Order is unconstitutional, as many Justices emphasized. Echoing CAC’s brief on behalf of an ideologically diverse group of scholars, Justice Sotomayor explained that the people  who drafted the Citizenship Clause understood that it would guarantee citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who were here temporarily. Indeed, as our brief explains, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Framers enacted the Citizenship Clause to broadly establish birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to noncitizen parents, with limited exceptions that are not applicable here, in line with a long common law history of birthright citizenship that dates back to the Founding. Whenever the Court reviews the merits of the Executive Order, the proper outcome is clear: the Court should hold that the Order is unconstitutional.

Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Appellate Counsel Smita Ghosh added the following reaction:

The stakes here are high. Many Justices recognized that their ruling on the procedural issue of universal relief could have serious consequences. As they noted, limiting the injunctions below could result in a situation where the government would continue to apply an illegal citizenship policy while dodging Supreme Court review.  As Justice Kagan explained, this “catch me if you can” problem would result in “an untold number of people that this Court has said should be citizens” not being treated as such.