The Supreme Court has agreed to hear oral arguments on President Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship, making it one of the most anticipated cases of Trump’s second term.

The justices scheduled arguments for May 15th.

Fox News reports:

The Trump administration in March asked the Supreme Court to intervene and allow a narrow version of the president’s executive order ending birthright citizenship to proceed. Trump signed the order on his first day in office and was immediately met with a flurry of lawsuits across the country.

The administration’s appeal concerns three nationwide injunctions brought in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state.

All three states had issued nationwide injunctions blocking the birthright citizenship ban from taking force — a move that lawyers for the Trump administration argued in their Supreme Court filing was overly broad.

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Acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris asked the justices to limit the scope of the rulings to cover only individuals directly impacted by the relevant courts.

“These cases — which involve challenges to the President’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order concerning birthright citizenship — raise important constitutional questions with major ramifications for securing the border,” Harris wrote in their appeal.

To date, no court has sided with the Trump administration’s executive order seeking to ban birthright citizenship, though multiple district courts have blocked it from taking effect.

“I am so happy. I think the case has been so misunderstood,” President Trump said.

WATCH:

Per CNN:

Trump made ending birthright citizenship part of his campaign for reelection, even though past presidents and courts for more than a century have read the 14th Amendment to guarantee citizenship to anyone “born or naturalized in the United States.”

He signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House that would have barred the government from issuing or accepting documents recognizing citizenship for people born in the US to foreign parents.

The move drew a series of swift lawsuits and lower courts issued sweeping injunctions requiring Trump to halt implementation of his birthright citizenship order. That is likely why Trump focused his appeal not on birthright citizenship, per se, but rather framed it as a “modest” request to limit the scope of the lower court orders.

While that was technically a modest legal request that, in another context, might have found bipartisan support, it is a potentially explosive one practically.

A landmark Supreme Court precedent from 1898, US v. Wong Kim Ark, affirmed the idea that people born in the United States are citizens, and the modern court hasn’t signaled a desire to revisit that holding.

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But some conservatives believe those long-held views are misguided. The 14th Amendment includes a phrase that citizenship applies only to people who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. And, they have said, foreign national parents who are in the US illegally may not be viewed as meeting that requirement.

 

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