Minnesota suit over Trump's birthright citizenship order gets hearing

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Minneapolis, MN (MinnPost)

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday heard the first lawsuit Minnesota has filed against President Donald Trump and appeared split on whether a court could issue a nationwide injunction to stop the president's attempt to end birthright citizenship.

Minnesota was one of 22 Democratic states that sued to stop Trump from stripping U.S. citizenship from children born in the United States of undocumented mothers.

Considering suits filed by the states and immigrant advocacy groups, federal courts in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington issued temporary injunctions that stopped the Trump administration from ending birthright citizenship for those children of immigrants.

The Trump administration appealed those rulings, and the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear their case. The high court is not expected to decide whether ending birthright citizenship is constitutional, but whether a court can issue what are known as universal injunctions to block Trump's executive orders nationwide.

The Trump administration, which has been blocked by many such injunctions in recent months, argues the practice is unconstitutional. If the Supreme Court sides with the administration, temporary injunctions would only be legally binding in the states that have sued to stop Trump's executive orders.

That means birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants would only be shielded in Minnesota and the other states that have sued.

Justice Elena Kagan warned that a ruling in favor of the administration could result in making some states magnets for pregnant migrants.

The end of nationwide injunctions would also impact cases aimed at stopping Trump's efforts to dramatically shrink the size of the government workforce, halt federal spending and end diversity programs.

While the appeal is limited, Chief Justice John Roberts said the Supreme Court can quickly take up the underlying issue of whether Trump's order banning birthright citizenship is constitutional.

The Supreme Court upheld the right of birthright citizenship in 1898, when it decided a child born in the United States, Wong Kim Ark, was a citizen even though his parents were "subjects of the Emperor of China."

"For more than 125 years, the Supreme Court has clearly interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to eliminate any doubt or confusion that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a U.S. citizen," said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison when he joined the other states in January to sue Trump over birthright citizenship.

The Trump administration, however, argues that the children of undocumented parents have no right to U.S. citizenship because they are in the country illegally and, therefore, are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. government, even though they are subject to criminal prosecutions and deportations.

On Thursday, the justices appeared divided over whether nationwide injunctions are constitutional. But they seemed to pose tougher questions to the Trump administration's lawyers than to lawyers for the Democratic states and the immigrants' rights advocates challenging Trump's executive order.

Minnesota's Democratic lawmakers, Reps. Betty McCollum, Ilhan Omar and Kelly Morrison, joined 183 other Democratic House members in an amicus brief that said that, regardless of whether the Supreme Court believes Trump's birthright executive order is unconstitutional, Trump cannot violate the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which confers all children born in the United States have U.S. citizenship.

"The President must participate in the political process and adhere to our constitutional structure, not simply ignore them," the lawmakers said in their suit. "And unless and until Congress changes the laws, the president must follow them. Here, however, rather than trying to persuade Congress to exercise its authority to amend or repeal the INA, the President seeks to evade that well-established process with an unconstitutional power grab. That cannot stand."

As the minority party in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, Democrats can't hold official hearings, but Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., held an unofficial one this week anyway and invited Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon to testify.

The issue was a bill approved by the GOP-led U.S. House known as the SAVE Act, which would require that anyone registering to vote or changing their registration appear in person at an election office with original or certified documents proving not only identity but also citizenship status.

For most Americans, that would mean showing a passport or birth certificate. Supporters say the new requirements to be able to register to vote are needed to combat fraud and prohibit those ineligible - by which they chiefly mean undocumented immigrants - from voting.

Simon testified the legislation "poses one of the greatest threats to the freedom to vote in our lifetime."

Simon said the legislation was "based on the totally false assumption that huge numbers of non-citizens are voting."

"There is no evidence of that," Simon testified. "In fact, the research shows the opposite is true."

Simon also said the legislation would prove a nightmare for state election officials because it would "change election administration in this country overnight," and impose the risk of criminal prosecution for local election workers left trying to sort out how these new federal requirements impact their responsibilities.

In addition, poor Americans, who might not own a passport or have access to a birth certificate, would be disenfranchised under the legislation.

The legislation is expected to stumble in the U.S. Senate. But in March President Donald Trump issued an executive order that bypassed Congress and would enact a section of the SAVE Act - a requirement that an independent agency change the national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship.

That executive order was temporarily halted by a court's injunction.

But the GOP's push to place new requirements on voting are expected to continue.

At his hearing, Padilla asked Nicole Meek, an Air Force spouse who has moved five times and lived in three different states over the past 10 years, if it is reasonable to expect military members to be able to leave their bases and register to vote during election office hours.

"It would be very difficult for that to happen," Meek said.

She also testified that it would also be difficult for military families to have the resources or ability to comply with the SAVE Act's requirements for documentation.

"Given the fact that most military families move on average every two to three years and are often stationed far away from their home state, any requirement for documents to be submitted in person would be a logistical nightmare -- and in many cases impossible," Meek said.

A reader reacted to the House Energy and Commerce bill that would cut Medicaid by implementing work requirements and imposing new restrictions on the health plan for the poor.

"Republicans claim to hate regulations, but seem to be redesigning the application process to be more difficult, to discourage people from getting coverage," the reader wrote. "It seems the only reason it is being done is to punish poor people by new cost sharing to reduce access to services and put the poor deeper in debt, to deny care or drive them to payday loan companies, the legal equivalent of loan sharks."

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