New Jersey leads the arguments on birthright citizenship before the Supreme Court

New Jersey led the legal argument against President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship on Thursday, its solicitor general urging the Supreme Court to bring clarity to the matter through a nationwide ruling

It was not immediately evident what such a decision might say, but a majority of justices were concerned about the impact of even temporarily allowing the Trump administration to deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the country without official permission.

Trump has asked the court to rule that lower, federal district court injunctions can apply only to the immigrants who are named in the case or to the states that are plaintiffs in the case. That would allow the administration to implement part of the president’s order even as the legal debate goes on.

New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum, representing the 22 states that sued, told the court that granting the administration’s arguments could mean that citizenship could “turn on and off” for children as they crossed the Delaware River — citizens in Camden, since New Jersey is part of the suit, but not in Philadelphia, since Pennsylvania has not joined the legal proceedings.

“The idea that citizenship would be decided based on the state you live in is absurd,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin told The Inquirer after the hearing. “I’m confident we will prevail.”

The president has a right to put forth a policy agenda, he said, but not one that breaks the law or hurts residents. New Jersey officials went to court the day after Trump issued his order in January, with Platkin proclaiming, “Presidents in this country have broad powers, but they are not kings.”

On Thursday, Platkin said he was “very proud of the fact that New Jersey is leading, particularly in this case. We’re a state built on immigrants. This is who we are. It’s also who we are as a nation.”

The case concerns a long-established constitutional provision: that babies born on American soil are American citizens. The arguments on Thursday focused on a separate but critical question, specifically whether federal district court judges can rule against the administration on a nationwide basis.

Several Supreme Court justices seemed intent on finding a way to scale back nationwide court orders, while maintaining a wall against Trump’s desired restrictions on birthright citizenship.

A decision is expected by the end of June.

“This isn’t just a legal fight, it’s a test of what we’re willing to tolerate,” Patty Torres and Diana Robinson, codirectors of the immigrant-advocacy group Make the Road Pennsylvania, said in a statement Thursday. “What we accept today for immigrants and refugees is what we accept for citizens tomorrow. And tomorrow has arrived.”

Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship. He argues that birthright citizenship entices people to enter the country illegally, so that children who are born here will automatically gain American citizenship.

Those citizens, at age 21, can sponsor close family members to live here permanently.

Birthright citizenship is guaranteed in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868 after the end of the Civil War, and says 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 principle of birth citizenship was confirmed by an 1898 Supreme Court case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that children born in the U.S. are citizens, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

A president cannot amend the Constitution by himself. During his first term Trump promised to end birthright citizenship but took little action to do so.

During the second Trump presidency, nationwide injunctions have emerged as a check on the administration’s policy efforts, particularly around immigration. Judges have issued 40 nationwide injunctions since Trump began his second term in January, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court at the start of more than two hours of arguments.

Trump’s executive order, issued on the first day of his second term, would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the country illegally or temporarily.

The state attorneys general were joined by immigrants and civil rights groups in filing suit, and lower federal courts quickly barred enforcement of Trump’s order while the lawsuits proceeded.

The court’s liberal justices Thursday seemed firmly in support of the lower-court rulings that said Trump’s changes would upset a long-settled understanding of birthright citizenship.

Several conservative justices who might be open to limits on nationwide injunctions wanted to know the practical effects of that.

“What do hospitals do with a newborn? What do states do with a newborn?” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh asked Sauer.

Sauer said they wouldn’t necessarily do anything different, but the government might figure out ways to reject documentation with “the wrong designation of citizenship.”

Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor was among several justices who suggested that a confusing patchwork of rules would result if the court orders were narrowed, and new restrictions on citizenship could temporarily take effect in some states but not others.

Some children might be “stateless,” Sotomayor said, because they would be denied citizenship in the U.S. as well as the countries from which their parents fled to avoid persecution.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.