How the Supreme Court’s Ruling on ‘Universal Injunctions’ May Affect Birthright Citizenship

In a June 27 ruling, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to partially halt nationwide injunctions blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for certain people born in the U.S. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee who wrote the majority opinion, said “universal injunctions” issued by district judges “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”

In the three prior cases addressed in the ruling, district courts issued the injunctions after siding with plaintiffs who argued that the executive order Trump issued on Jan. 20 violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says, in part, “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 idea was to grant citizenship to recently freed slaves, but the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, also forms the basis of the country’s longstanding policy of granting birthright citizenship to anyone born on American soil.