The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency request by the Department of Justice to reinstate Trump’s repeal of birthright citizenship. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship had been quickly blocked by a Seattle judge.
The decision by the court likely sets up a battle in the Supreme Court.
Trump’s DOJ argued that Trump’s executive order was “an integral part of President Trump’s broader effort to repair the United States’ immigration system and to address the ongoing crisis at the southern border.”
The lawsuit that resulted in the appeals court case, filed by four states’ Democratic attorneys general, argued that the case wasn’t about immigration, but an area that the president didn’t have the authority to touch.
“This is not a case about ‘immigration,” they wrote. “It is about citizenship rights that the Fourteenth Amendment and federal statute intentionally and explicitly place beyond the President’s authority to condition or deny.”
The 9th Circuit panel is made up of three judges — a Trump appointee, a Jimmy Carter appointee, and a George W. Bush appointee. While all sided against Trump, Judge Danielle Forrest, a Trump appointee, concurred on the grounds that the DOJ hadn’t proven that there was an “emergency.”
“Deciding important substantive issues on one week’s notice turns our usual decision-making process on its head,” she wrote. “We should not undertake this task unless the circumstances dictate that we must. They do not here.”
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The 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship for everyone born on American soil; the United States is among 33 countries to guarantee citizenship upon birth in the country.
“We’re the only country in the world that does this with birthright, as you know, absolutely ridiculous,” Trump said in January after signing the executive order.
