A group of 22 states had sued the Trump administration over the executive order, and the President’s team was hit with three injunctions issued by federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington State. These are the cases which were heard.
Initially, the Trump EO was written to prevent children born of illegal immigrants to be given automatic citizenship because they were born in the US. The parent broke US law, hence, they were not entitled to be here. And their “anchor” babies did not confer that right.
When the 14th Amendment was written, the former slaves, whose ancestors were UNWILLINGLY brought here, needed protections to make certain they were considered citizens, since they were here for generations, and there had to be no ambiguity on their status as Americans.
There is a huge difference in context between the two issues regarding birthright citizenship.
But the bigger legal problem that these cases highlight is whether a local district court Judge has the authority to issue nationwide injunctions.
Justices across the political spectrum, including conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas as well as liberal Ketanji Brown Jackson, have griped publicly about the frequent use of nationwide injunctions among lower court judges.
In March, a tally by the Harvard Law Review found that lower courts lodged at least 64 national injunctions against Trump during his first term, compared to just six lodged against President George W Bush, 12 against President Barack Obama and 14 against President Joe Biden during their entire presidencies.
“This is a bipartisan problem that has now spanned the last five presidential administrations,” Sauer contended. “Universal injunctions exceed the judicial power granted in Article III, which exists only to address the injury to the complaining party.
“They encourage rampant forum shopping. They require judges to make rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions.”
It seemed that the original purpose for the hearing, birthright citizenship, became a secondary reason for the hearing, and instead, nationwide, universal injunctions were heavily discussed by the Justices. It left doubt in the minds of many how the Justices will decide.
Their decision is expected at the end of June. Expect it to be a split decision, but not how anyone thinks.
It will be 5 to 4 to continue birthright citizenship and 7 to 2 to finally stop universal injunctions, short of a class action suit.
No comments:
Post a Comment