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What to know about the Supreme Court arguments in the birthright citizenship case
Law & Court News |
2025/05/17 08:01
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The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Thursday in its first case stemming from the blitz of actions that have marked the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Before the court are the Trump administration’s emergency appeals of lower court orders putting nationwide holds on the Republican president’s push to deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally.
Birthright citizenship is among several issues, many related to immigration, that the administration has asked the court to address on an emergency basis, after lower courts acted to slow the president’s agenda.
The justices are also considering the administration’s pleas to end humanitarian parole for more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela and to strip other temporary legal protections from another 350,000 Venezuelans. The administration remains locked in legal battles over its efforts to swiftly deport people accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act.
In Thursday’s arguments, the justices will be weighing whether judges have the authority to issue what are called nationwide, or universal, injunctions. The Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, has complained that judges are overreaching by issuing orders that apply to everyone instead of just the parties before the court.
Yet in discussing the limits of a judge’s power, the court almost certainly will have to take up the change to citizenship that Trump wants to make, which would upset the settled understanding of birthright citizenship that has existed for more than 125 years.
The first sentence of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution reads: “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.”
The Citizenship Clause, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, was included to ensure that formerly enslaved people would be citizens. It effectively overturned the notorious Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court held that Black people, no matter their status, were not citizens.
Since at least 1898 and the Supreme Court case of Wong Kim Ark, the provision has been widely interpreted to make citizens of everyone born on U.S. soil except for the children of diplomats, who have allegiance to another government; enemies present in the U.S. during hostile occupation; and, until a federal law changed things in 1924, sovereign Native American tribes.
Trump’s executive order would deny citizenship to children if neither parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident. Those categories include people who are in the country illegally or temporarily because, the administration contends, they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
Almost immediately, states, immigrants and rights groups sued to block the executive order, accusing the Republican administration of trying to unsettle the understanding of birthright citizenship. Every court to consider the issue has sided with the challengers.
The administration is asking for the court orders to be reined in, not overturned entirely, and spends little time defending the executive order. The Justice Department argues that there has been an “explosion” in the number of nationwide injunctions issued since Trump retook the White House. The far-reaching court orders violate the law as well as long-standing views on a judge’s authority, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on behalf of the administration.
Courts typically deal only with the parties before them. Even class actions reach only the people who are part of a class certified by a judge, though those can affect millions of people, Sauer wrote.
Nationwide injunctions, by contrast, have no limits and can even include parties who oppose what the court orders are designed to protect, he wrote. As an example, Sauer pointed to Republican-led states that favor the administration’s position but are subject to the nationwide injunctions.
But the justices may well ask about Trump’s executive order and perhaps even tip their hand.
Lawyers for the states and immigrants argue that this is an odd issue for the court to use to limit judges’ authority because courts have uniformly found that Trump’s order likely violates the Constitution. Limiting the number of people who are protected by the rulings would create a confusing patchwork of rules in which new restrictions on citizenship could temporarily take effect in 27 states. That means a child born in a state that is challenging Trump’s order would be a citizen, but a child born at the same time elsewhere would not, the lawyers said.
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Judge to weigh Louisiana AG’s challenge to city jail’s ‘sanctuary’ policy
Law & Court News |
2025/04/30 06:29
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Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is pushing forward with her efforts to force Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to drop a longtime policy that generally prohibits deputies from directly engaging in federal immigration enforcement within the city’s jail.
In legal filings, Murrill claims that the policy — which the state characterizes as a so-called “sanctuary city” policy — is in direct conflict with a newly passed state law that requires state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration agencies.
“The consent decree now sits fundamentally at odds with state law as applicable to immigration detainers,” Murrill said in court documents filed Friday.
A federal court will now determine whether to allow the state of Louisiana to join a 2011 federal suit that resulted in the policy and whether to throw out the policy altogether. A hearing has been set for April 30.
The state’s campaign against “sanctuary” policies comes as President Donald Trump is pushing local law enforcement agencies to join the federal government in his promised immigration crackdown. Since his inauguration, Trump has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to push for more partnerships between local law enforcement units and federal immigration agencies. A few have already signed up. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime immigration hardliner and Trump ally, has worked with Republican lawmakers in the state to enact laws that encourage those collaborations.
As attorney general, Landry criticized a policy adopted by the New Orleans Police Department, under a long-running federal consent decree that blocks officers from enforcing immigration laws.
Neither Murrill’s office nor representatives for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to requests for comment.
In court filings, Murrill said Hutson “does not oppose the (state’s) intervention” in the case.” But a spokesperson for Hutson said that’s not exactly true. “It’s more accurate that we take no position regarding the state intervention,” a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.
While she has not taken a position for or against increased collaboration with ICE, in an interview with Fox 8 in December, Hutson noted that the jail’s resources were far too stretched to take on immigration enforcement.
The sheriff’s policy stems from a 2013 federal court settlement in a civil rights case involving two New Orleans construction workers picked up on minor charges in 2009 and 2010. Mario Cacho and Antonio Ocampo sued after they were allegedly illegally held in the city’s jail past the completion of their sentences. The two were held at the request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency issues such “detainer” requests to local law enforcement agencies, asking them to hold onto arrestees who are suspected of immigration violations. Local agencies are only supposed to honor the hold requests for 48 hours, after which they should let detainees free. But in 2009 and 2010, then-Sheriff Marlin Gusman detained Cacho and Ocampo for months, according to legal filings in their case against the office.
Ocampo and Cacho settled the case with the Sheriff’s Office in 2013, and Gusman agreed to adopt a new policy on immigration investigations. The resulting policy blocks the agency from investigating immigration violations and from detaining immigrants for ICE without a court order, except in certain cases where they are facing charges for a small number of serious violent crimes.
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Court won’t revive a Minnesota ban on gun-carry permits for young adults
Law & Court News |
2025/04/25 07:35
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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Minnesota asking to revive the state’s ban on gun-carry permits for young adults.
The justices also left in place a ban on guns at the University of Michigan, declining to hear an appeal from a man who argued he has a right to be armed on campus. No justice noted a dissent in either case.
Taken together, the actions reflect the high court’s apparent lack of appetite for cases that further explore the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms.”
The court has repeatedly turned away gun cases since its 2022 ruling that expanded gun rights and a clarifying 2024 decision that upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.
The decision not to hear the Minnesota case was somewhat surprising because both sides sought the Supreme Court’s review and courts around the country have come to different conclusions about whether states can limit the gun rights of people aged 18 to 20 without violating the Constitution.
The federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled that the Minnesota ban conflicted with the Second Amendment, which the court noted sets no age limit and generally protects ordinary, law-abiding young adults.
In January, the federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a federal law requiring young adults to be 21 to buy handguns.
In February, a federal judge declined to block Hawaii’s ban on gun possession for people under 21.
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Supreme Court allows Trump to deport Venezuelans under wartime law
Law & Court News |
2025/04/08 10:02
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The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to use an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants, but said they must get a court hearing before they are taken from the United States.
In a bitterly divided decision, the court said the administration must give Venezuelans who it claims are gang members “reasonable time” to go to court.
But the conservative majority said the legal challenges must take place in Texas, instead of a Washington courtroom.
The court’s action appears to bar the administration from immediately resuming the flights that last month carried hundreds of migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador. The flights came soon after President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since World War II to justify the deportations under a presidential proclamation calling the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force.
The majority said nothing about those flights, which took off without providing the hearing the justices now say is necessary.
In dissent, the three liberal justices said the administration has sought to avoid judicial review in this case and the court “now rewards the government for its behavior.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined portions of the dissent.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it would be harder for people to challenge deportations individually, wherever they are being held, and noted that the administration has also said in another case before the court that it’s unable to return people who have been deported to the El Salvador prison by mistake.
“We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this,” she wrote.
The justices acted on the administration’s emergency appeal after the federal appeals court in Washington left in place an order temporarily prohibiting deportations of the migrants accused of being gang members under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act.
“For all the rhetoric of the dissents,” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion, the high court order confirms “that the detainees subject to removal orders under the AEA are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”
The case has become a flashpoint amid escalating tension between the White House and the federal courts. It’s the second time in less than a week that a majority of conservative justices has handed Trump at least a partial victory in an emergency appeal after lower courts had blocked parts of his agenda.
Several other cases are pending, including over Trump’s plan to deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of parents who are in the country illegally.
Trump praised the court for its action Monday.
“The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself. A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.
Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of five Venezuelan noncitizens who were being held in Texas, hours after the proclamation was made public and as immigration authorities were shepherding hundreds of migrants to waiting airplanes.
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said the “critical point” of the high court’s ruling was that people must be allowed due process to challenge their removal. “That is an important victory,” he said.
Boasberg imposed a temporary halt on deportations and also ordered planeloads of Venezuelan immigrants to return to the U.S. That did not happen. The judge held a hearing last week over whether the government defied his order to turn the planes around. The administration has invoked a “ state secrets privilege ” and refused to give Boasberg any additional information about the deportations.
Trump and his allies have called for impeaching Boasberg. In a rare statement, Chief Justice John Roberts said “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
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Hungary welcomes Netanyahu and announces it’s quitting top war crimes court
Law & Court News |
2025/04/04 10:55
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Hungary will start the process to withdraw from the International Criminal Court, an official said Thursday, just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived to red carpet treatment in the country’s capital despite an arrest warrant from the world’s only permanent global tribunal for war crimes and genocide.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave the Israeli leader a welcome with full military honors in Budapest’s Castle District. The two close allies stood side by side as a military band played and an elaborate procession of soldiers on horseback and carrying swords and bayoneted rifles marched by.
As the ceremony unfolded, Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, released a brief statement saying that “the government will initiate the withdrawal procedure” for leaving the court, which could take a year or more to complete. Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary, which is scheduled to last until Sunday, was only his second foreign trip since the ICC issued the warrant against him in November.
The ICC, based in The Hague, Netherlands, said when issuing its warrant that there was reason to believe Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had committed crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, most of whom have since been released in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Israel rescued eight living hostages and has recovered dozens of bodies.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say whether those killed are civilians or combatants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence. Israeli military’s response resumed last month, shattering a ceasefire.
After the ICC issued the warrant, Orbán invited Netanyahu to Budapest, and accused the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.” That invitation was in open defiance of the court’s ruling and contradicted Hungary’s obligations as a signatory to arrest any suspects facing a warrant if they set foot on their soil.
All countries in the 27-member European Union, including Hungary, are signatories, but the court relies on member countries to enforce its rulings. Hungary joined the court in 2001 during Orbán’s first term as prime minister.
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