WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled 2-1 that Trump’s directive violates the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The president is seeking to deny automatic citizenship to the US-born children of undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign visitors.
The appeals panel also affirmed a lower court’s nationwide injunction, calling the measure necessary and appropriate to protect the states from potential harm if Trump’s order took effect. The case was brought by a coalition of Democratic-led states and was first heard by a district judge in Seattle, reports The Washington Post.
The decision came despite a US Supreme Court ruling last month siding with the Trump administration’s argument that several federal judges had exceeded their authority in issuing universal injunctions against the birthright citizenship order.
“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” Judge Ronald M. Gould wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by Judge Michael Daly Hawkins. They were both appointed to the federal bench by former president Bill Clinton. Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Trump appointee, dissented in part.
“We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal preliminary injunction, and we affirm the injunction’s scope,” Gould wrote.
The ruling marked another setback for the Trump administration just weeks after the Supreme Court appeared to clear a path for the order to take effect. The justices did not rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s order but agreed, in a 6-3 decision, to scale back lower-courtinjunctions that had blocked it from moving forward. The high court kept Trump’s birthright ban on hold for at least 30 days and sent a set of cases back to the lower courts to determine the practical implications of their ruling.
However, the justices said nationwide injunctions could still be issued in some circumstances. In explaining their reasoning, the 9th Circuit panel stated that the Democratic-led states could be adversely affected if the district court judge’s nationwide injunction was narrowed, because they would still need to overhaul their systems to determine citizenship, given that parents and their children move between states.
The Supreme Court also left open the ability to try to block a policy nationwide through class-action lawsuits.Two weeks ago, a federal judge in New Hampshire placed a new nationwide block on the administration, agreeing to a request from civil rights groups to certify a class-action challenge against Trump’s order on behalf of US-born children or future children whose automatic citizenship could be jeopardized if it takes effect.
The 9th Circuit’s decision means that two nationwide injunctions are in effect and signals that the case could quickly return to the Supreme Court to determine whether the rulings are consistent with its order.
“The court agrees that the president cannot redefine what it means to be American with the stroke of a pen,” Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, whose state was among those that brought the lawsuit, said on social media. “He cannot strip away the rights, liberties, and protections of children born in our country.”
