The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday will hear oral arguments on a challenge to President Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship. The high court is considering whether to allow the proposal to go into effect in some parts of the country while litigation continues. Supreme Court hears challenge to Trump's birthright citizenship order in major case https://t.co/junPPhMXaA — Fox News (@FoxNews) May 15, 2025 Fox News reports: Justices on the high court agreed in April to hear the case, which centers on three lower courts that issued national injunctions earlier this year blocking Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. The order reinterprets the 14th Amendment to deny automatic U.S. citizenship to children born in the U.S. if their mother is unlawfully present or temporarily in the country, and if their father is neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at time of birth. Trump’s action remains on hold nationwide pending Supreme Court intervention. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court in March to review the case, arguing that the three lower courts in question had exceeded their authority in issuing the universal injunctions. “These injunctions exceed the district courts’ authority under Article III [of the Constitution] and gravely encroach on the President’s executive power under Article II,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer told justices on the high court in a filing before arguments began. “Until this Court decides whether nationwide injunctions are permissible, a carefully selected subset of district courts will persist in granting them as a matter of course, relying on malleable eye-of-the-beholder criteria.” Plaintiffs told the high court that there is no reason for them to intervene here, objecting both to the executive order in question, which one lawyer described in a brief as “citizenship stripping,” as well as any effort to block the nationwide injunctions. The lower court orders “preserve the status quo that has existed for more than a century, and the federal government suffers no harm, much less irreparable harm, by continuing to follow long-settled laws while the appeals proceed,” Nicholas Brown, the Attorney General of Washington state, said in its filing. Oral arguments are expected to focus not only on the lower courts that blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship order – but also on whether federal judges can issue universal injunctions halting executive actions nationwide. The Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the practice, though several conservative justices, including Justice Thomas, have raised concerns. “Birthright Citizenship was not meant for people taking vacations to become permanent Citizens of the United States of America, and bringing their families with them, all the time laughing at the ‘SUCKERS’ that we are!” President Trump said. “The United States of America is the only Country in the World that does this, for what reason, nobody knows — But the drug cartels love it! We are, for the sake of being politically correct, a STUPID Country but, in actuality, this is the exact opposite of being politically correct, and it is yet another point that leads to the dysfunction of America,” he continued. Full statement: Per NBC News: A decision siding with the administration would not only provide a boost to Trump’s birthright citizenship proposal but would also help the administration implement other policies via executive actions, many of which have also been blocked nationwide by lower court judges. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer complained to the justices there had been a “cascade” of national injunctions against Trump’s directives, which have created “a host of practical problems.” He called such orders “a bipartisan problem that has now spanned the last five presidential administrations.” Sauer suggested the cases should be brought individually, saying, “The courts grant relief to people who sue in front of them.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s three liberals, suggested such an injunction was necessary in this case. “So as far as I see it, this order violates four Supreme Court precedents. And you are claiming that not just the Supreme Court, that both the Supreme Court and no lower court, can stop an executive, universally, from violating that holding, those holdings, by this court,” she said. Justice Clarence Thomas, a member of the conservative majority, asked Sauer how long universal injunctions have been used. Sauer said they started being used in the 1960s. “So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?” Thomas asked. “That’s exactly correct,” Sauer replied. The justices have not agreed to take up the bigger legal question of whether Trump’s plan comports with the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The longstanding interpretation of the provision as understood by generations of Americans, including legal scholars on the left and right, is that anyone born on U.S. soil is an American citizen with a few minor exceptions, including people who are the children of diplomats. Listen to oral arguments: