What does Supreme Court ruling mean for birthright citizenship in WA?

Thirty days from today, every child born in Washington will remain a U.S. citizen, but, barring further court decisions, some children born next door in Idaho will not be.

That’s the immediate upshot of the U.S. Supreme Court decision issued Thursday that bars federal courts, in most cases, from issuing nationwide injunctions that block actions of the president and the executive branch.

The case arises from lawsuits filed by Washington state and others that try to block President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship — the guarantee in the 14th Amendment that every child born here is a U.S. citizen.

A judge in Seattle immediately blocked Trump’s order nationwide in January, calling it blatantly unconstitutional.” Judges in Massachusetts and Maryland soon followed.

But the Supreme Court on Friday, without addressing whether Trump’s order is, in fact, constitutional, ruled that those judges had overstepped their bounds.

The 6-3 decision, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, found that nationwide injunctions “exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.” Friday’s decision blocks the lower court orders “to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff.”

That means that — for now — Trump’s order can go into effect in 30 days in the 28 states (Idaho included) that did not sue to block it.

It remains possible that Trump’s order will not go into effect anywhere. Lower court judges could decide that this is an instance where, to grant “complete relief” to the states that sued, it’s necessary to issue a nationwide injunction. Or those directly affected by the order — undocumented parents or, perhaps, states — could use a class-action lawsuit to block it, but that comes with greater procedural burdens.

“Plaintiffs who challenge the legality of a new federal statute or executive action and request preliminary injunctive relief may sometimes seek to proceed by class action,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence, “and ask a court to award preliminary classwide relief that may, for example, be statewide, regionwide, or even nationwide.”

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, in a statement, said the court’s decision “is disappointing on many levels.”

“But importantly, this morning’s order does not dispute the issue we handily won in the trial court — that President Trump’s attempt to strip birthright citizenship is unlawful and wrong,” Brown said.

Brown noted that the majority decision still allows lower courts to issue broad injunctions when needed to provide complete relief to the parties involved.

“In the case led by Washington state, the trial judge already ruled that nationwide relief is necessary to protect Washington and its co-plaintiffs from the harms from the executive order,” he said. “We continue to believe that President Trump’s unconstitutional and cruel order must be stopped across the country to guarantee protection for Washington and its residents.”

Brown, at a news conference with other Democratic state attorneys general, said the rule of law in America today is “fragile” and “the court made it even more tenuous.”

“If you are living in a state that did not participate in this coalition of action against the Trump administration, then your rights are tenuous,” Brown said.

Washington and its allies had argued that a patchwork system of citizenship — in which whether you’re a U.S. citizen depends on which state you’re born in — was both unconstitutional and unworkable.

But the court chose not to address that issue at all.

“The Court declines to take up these arguments,” Barrett wrote. The decision asks lower courts to consider “whether a narrower injunction is appropriate” and, in doing so, whether a patchwork system of citizenship is appropriate.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution begins: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Trump’s executive order argues that children of undocumented immigrants are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore are not citizens.

It would strip citizenship from around 150,000 babies each year, including 4,000 in Washington, according to the states challenging Trump. It would strip citizenship not just from babies whose parents are in the country illegally, but also from those whose mother is here legally but temporarily, like on a student or work visa.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, called the court’s decision “breathtakingly misguided” and said it “will create chaos, irreparable damage, and uneven application of the law across the country.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in dissent, accused the Trump administration and the majority of “gamesmanship” in trying to end birthright citizenship.

The Trump administration, she noted, didn’t even argue that Trump’s order is constitutional, it just argued that the court orders blocking it were too broad.

The administration “asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone,” Sotomayor wrote. “Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit.”

“Shamefully, this Court plays along, she wrote.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.