By Andrew Chung, John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Donald Trump took the fight over his attempt to restrict automatic U.S. birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court on Thursday as the Republican president’s administration asked the justices to narrow a judicial block imposed on this key element of his hardline approach toward immigration.
The Justice Department made the request challenging the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s order by federal judges in Washington state, Massachusetts and Maryland.
The administration said the injunctions should be scaled back from applying universally and should be limited to just the plaintiffs that brought the cases and are “actually within the courts’ power.”
“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” the Justice Department said in the filing.
“This court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched.”
Some federal judges also issued nationwide injunctions to block certain policies of previous presidents.
Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in office on January 20, directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
The order was intended to apply starting February 19, but has been blocked nationwide by multiple federal judges.
Trump’s action has drawn a series of lawsuits from plaintiffs including 22 Democratic state attorneys general, immigrant rights advocates and expectant mothers.
They argue among other things that Trump’s order violates a right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause states that 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 administration contends that the 14th Amendment, long understood to confer citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States, does not extend to immigrants who are in the country illegally or even to immigrants whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas.
In Thursday’s filing, the Justice Department said that a policy of universal birthright citizenship “has created strong incentives for illegal immigration.
It has led to ‘birth tourism,’ the practice by which expecting mothers travel to the United States to give birth and secure U.S. citizenship for their children.”
Trump’s push to restrict birthright citizenship is part of a broader immigration and border crackdown including tasking the U.S.
military with aiding border security and issuing a broad ban on asylum.
An 1898 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark long has been interpreted as guaranteeing that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to American citizenship.
Trump’s Justice Department has argued that the court’s ruling in that case was narrower, applying to children whose parents had a “permanent domicile and residence in the United States.”
Its request to the justices marks the administration’s latest trip to the top U.S.
judicial body to defend Trump’s actions. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump during his first term as president.
The judges who ruled against Trump’s order faulted it as conflicting with the Constitution.
In the Washington state lawsuit, brought by the Democratic-led states of Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon and several pregnant women – Seattle-based U.S.
District Judge John Coughenour issued his injunction on February 6 against Trump’s order.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on February 19 refused to put the judge’s injunction on hold.
During one hearing in the case, Coughenour, an appointee of Republican former President Ronald Reagan, called Trump’s order “blatantly unconstitutional.”
At another hearing, Coughenour accused Trump of ignoring the rule of law for political and personal gain.
The judge added: “There are moments in the world’s history where people look back and ask, ‘Where were the lawyers, where were the judges?” Coughenour said.
“In these moments, the rule of law becomes especially vulnerable. I refuse to let that beacon go dark today.”
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York and John Kruzel in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)
