In dealing with the Trump administration's birthright citizenship case, the Supreme Court addressed a much broader question concerning the injunction power of federal judges. (Getty Images)
The Supreme Court’s decision arose from various Democratic-led states and immigration rights groups bringing several lawsuits across the country challenging Trump’s executive order, which the president signed shortly after he took office.
The order dramatically changed the scope of birthright citizenship, which is outlined under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and allows babies born to noncitizens in the United States to automatically receive U.S. citizenship in most cases.
Courts uniformly rejected Trump’s policy and blocked it by issuing universal injunctions that applied to the whole country and not just certain pregnant noncitizens being represented in court.
Seattle-based federal Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, chastised government attorneys during a February hearing over the matter.
"It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals," the judge said. "The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain."
Coughenour later said that if Trump wanted to change the "exceptional American grant of birthright citizenship," then the president would need to work with Congress to amend the Constitution, rather than attempt to redefine the amendment through an executive order.
In the wake of the Supreme Court's order, courts and plaintiffs are moving quickly to adapt and, in some cases, find workarounds before the 30-day deadline arrives.
Within hours of the high court's decision, plaintiffs who brought a birthright citizenship lawsuit in Maryland asked a judge to change the lawsuit to a class action proceeding that covers all babies who will be born after Trump’s executive order takes effect.
The request was one of what is quickly becoming a manifold of court requests that are testing the Supreme Court’s injunction decision and potentially undercutting it.
The Supreme Court’s decision left intact the ability for judges, if they see fit, to use class action lawsuits or statewide lawsuits to hand down sweeping orders blocking Trump’s policies from applying to wide swaths of people.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts before the State of the Union address in the House chamber in 2020 in Washington. (Getty Images)
Severino said she believed the six Republican-appointed justices would rely heavily on "history and tradition" and "what the words were understood to mean in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was passed."
"It's a challenging issue, in part because our immigration system looks so dramatically different now than it did at the time of the 14th Amendment, because the sort of immigration we're looking at was not really on their radar, nor was the type of entitlement state that we are living in," Severino said.
Michael Moreland, Villanova University law school professor, told Fox News Digital there has long been an academic debate about the language in the amendment. It states that babies born in the United States and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are citizens. The dispute, Moreland said, has centered on "how broadly or narrowly" to interpret that clause.
The Trump administration has said that as part of its immigration crackdown, it wants to curtail abuse of the 14th Amendment, which can include foreigners traveling to the United States strictly to give birth with no intention of legally settling in the country. The amendment also incentivizes migrants to enter the country illegally to give birth and rewards pregnant women already living illegally in the country by imparting citizenship to their children, the administration has said.
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Judges, thus far, have found that Trump's policy is at odds with more than 150 years of precedent. The government has long given citizenship to any child born in the United States with few exceptions, such as babies born to foreign diplomats or foreign military members.
"The balance of opinion for a long time has been on the side of saying that the 14th Amendment does have a right of birthright citizenship," Moreland said.
Ashley Oliver is a reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business, covering the Justice Department and legal affairs. Email story tips to ashley.oliver@fox.com.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/how-supreme-courts-decision-advances-trumps-fight-against-birthright-citizenship