The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to definitively rule on whether the president’s executive order purporting to end automatic birthright citizenship is constitutional.
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The two appeals, arising from cases in Washington state and New Hampshire, will likely determine once and for all whether the contentious proposal can move forward.
It has long been assumed that anyone born on U.S. soil becomes a citizen, with the exception of children of diplomats, as laid out in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
The Trump administration’s novel position is that the guarantee does not apply to either temporary visitors who legally entered the country or people who entered the country illegally.
The long-accepted interpretation of a broad right to citizenship that has held sway for more than a century is a “mistaken view” of the 14th Amendment that “became pervasive, with destructive consequences,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in court papers.
The new appeals at the Supreme Court differ from cases the Supreme Court decided earlier this year in favor of the administration, which concerned only the technical question of whether federal judges had the authority to block the policy nationwide while litigation continued.
Unlike the earlier cases, the latest filings are not emergency requests that the court will act on quickly. They are regular appeals that could take months for the court to resolve, most likely after agreeing to hear the cases and then hearing oral arguments.
Sauer suggested the court decide the cases in its new term, which starts in October and ends in June of next year.
As of Friday evening, the cases had not yet been officially docketed at the court.
NBC News obtained them from the Washington state Attorney General’s Office, which filed one of the underlying lawsuits, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents individual plaintiffs in the New Hampshire case.
The Justice Department could not be reached for comment.
Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said Friday evening that the executive order is illegal and “no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that.”
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