最高法院周四听取了唐纳德·特朗普总统的口头辩论紧急请求撤销阻止他终止出生公民权的行政命令的全国性禁令。
法院罕见的5月开庭为今年夏天做出决定特朗普是否可以推进将美国公民身份仅限于在美国土地上出生的合法永久居民的计划。
该案件预计还将解决个别地区法院法官在全国范围内单独阻止总统政策的合法性。特朗普正在寻求解除司法命令，防止联邦大规模裁员,资金冻结，并加急驱逐协议.
一个多世纪以来，法院和政府将第14修正案的公民身份条款解释为适用于任何在美国出生的人，无论孩子父母的公民身份如何。
这修正案内战后批准的《宪法》规定，所有“在美国出生或归化美国并受其管辖的人，都是美国和他们所居住的州的公民。”
副检察长约翰·绍尔(D. John Sauer)开启了最高法院对特朗普第二任期政策的首次口头辩论，他认为一名地区法官发布全国性命令的能力为政府创造了一个从根本上不公平的法律竞技场。
“我们的主要论点是，公民身份条款关系到前奴隶的子女，而不是非法外国人，他们当时甚至不是一个独立的阶层，”他告诉法官。
绍尔说，国家禁令迫使地区法官匆忙做出“高风险、低信息的决定”，鼓励选择法庭，并防止“新颖和困难的法律问题的渗透”。
“他们不对称地运作，迫使政府在任何地方都获胜，而原告可以在任何地方获胜，”绍尔说，他去年以个人身份代表特朗普争取总统豁免权。
他的主张立即遭到了大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔的质疑，他认为这样的理论不仅会限制地区法院的能力，也会限制最高法院发布全国性的救济。
“这毫无意义，”她说，然后打了个比方，说明华盛顿的权力平衡发生了变化。
“当一位新总统下令，因为这个国家有太多的枪支暴力发生，他进来说，‘我有权从每个人手中拿走枪支’，他派出军队没收每个人的枪支。我们和法院不得不坐以待毙，直到每一个原告的名字或每一个枪被拿走的原告出庭?”她问。
在特朗普行政命令将美国公民身份仅限于合法永久居民在美国土地上出生的孩子的合法性问题上，索托马约尔清楚地表明了她的立场。她说，这个命令是非法的。
索托马约尔说:“在我看来，这一命令违反了最高法院的四个先例，你声称……最高法院和任何下级法院都不能阻止行政官员普遍违反本法院的裁决。”。
两位法官Neil Gorsuch和Amy Coney Barrett在一系列交流中向Sauer施压，讨论取消全国禁令是否会造成这样一种情况，即在最高法院可以对其合法性进行裁决之前，非法的行政命令已经存在了太长时间。
“绍尔将军，你真的打算回答卡根法官的问题，说没有办法迅速(在全国范围内)停止《就业条例》?”巴雷特问道。
Sauer回答说，使用法院的正常程序和应用最高法院明确的先例最终可以快速解决此类问题。
在交换意见之际，卡根法官质疑废除全国禁令的影响是否会通过要求个人原告——就像那些因特朗普与生俱来的行政命令而被剥夺公民权的人——在全国各地的法院提起零星诉讼，在法院系统中注入更多混乱。
索托马约尔还反驳了绍尔的论点，即最高法院将从下级法院发布意见的“渗透”中受益，这些意见将有助于高等法院就政府采取的行动的重大问题做出裁决。
“我们有大多数……法院已经过滤了这个问题，并说，‘你违反了先例，不仅是先例，而且是宪法第14(修正案)的简单含义，”她说。
“恕我直言，我认为我们所拥有的是下级法院根据案情做出的草率判决，无视第14修正案的基本原则——这是关于给予奴隶的孩子，而不是非法移民的孩子公民身份，”绍尔回答说。
但是一些法官认为限制全国性禁令的影响是可以承受的。首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨(John Roberts)指出，最高法院在审理案件方面“更快”了，提到了一项与抖音有关的法律挑战是如何在几个月内通过法院的。
“在没有普遍禁令的情况下，我们存活到了20世纪60年代，”克拉伦斯·托马斯法官补充道。
凯坦吉·布朗·杰克逊法官提出了这样的担忧，即阻止联邦法官发布全国性的命令将在本质上创造一个“如果你能就抓住我”的司法系统，在这个系统中，公民个人只有在他们有资源提起诉讼的情况下才能保护自己的权利。
“我不明白这与法治有什么关系，”她说。
绍尔认为，目前的全国禁令制度反而迫使特朗普政府从一个法院跑到另一个法院，赢得每一个挑战他们政策的案件，理由是一系列诉讼和禁令阻止了五角大楼的跨性别服役人员禁令。
“我认为‘如果你能抓住我’的问题在相反的方向运作，我们让政府从一个管辖区跑到另一个管辖区，不得不清理桌子，以便实施一项新政策，”他说。
他认为，司法系统应该更慢地工作，允许新的法律问题“渗透”，而不是匆忙做出判决，但杰克逊反驳说，拖延可能会导致非法政策的执行。
“如果政府说没有下级法院可以完全禁止它，这实际上意味着政府只是继续做所谓的非法事情，它延迟了法院触及根本问题的能力，”她说。
代表个人原告的乔治敦大学法律中心高级讲师凯尔西·考克兰(Kelsi Corkran)称，总统关于出生公民权的行政命令“公然非法”，应该被阻止，因为它违反了宪法、联邦法律和最高法院的先例。
“政府错了，”她说。众所周知，当有必要向原告提供完全的救济时，或者在特殊情况下有正当理由时，初步禁令可能有利于非当事人，这两种情况在这里都是真实的。
考克兰认为，在涉及“基本宪法权利”的问题上，应该允许全国性的命令。她说，完全排除法律救济会让个人受到不可挽回的伤害。“这是一个政府提出的失败、失败、失败的提议，”科克兰说。
卡根表示，中间路线不太可能解决问题，尽管她承认全国性禁令的问题已经激怒了两党总统和高等法院。
“问题在于法院总是以同样的方式判决，没有人真的认为下级法院会有所不同，”她说。
特朗普上任第一天就签署了一份美国总统之行政命令单方面宣布，只有父母拥有永久合法身份的新生儿才“受美国管辖”，因此有资格成为美国公民。
“本届政府认为出生公民权是违宪的，”白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特在2月的一次简报会上解释说。
三组不同的原告起诉阻止该命令，包括由22个国家组成的集团、移民倡导团体以及即将分娩的孩子会受到影响的孕妇。
“与生俱来的公民权是我们国家基本信条的核心，即在我们的土地上出生的所有人都是平等的，无论他们的出身如何，”移民倡导者的律师在法律简报中写道。
根据政府数据，美国每年约有15万名儿童出生在父母不是合法永久居民的家庭。
这些州在提交给法庭的文件中警告称，“在上诉进行期间，这些儿童将被迫生活在阴影中，面临被驱逐出境的持续风险”，而不是充分参与和归属自己的祖国——美国——的权利
马里兰州、马萨诸塞州和华盛顿州的联邦法官以及三个联邦上诉法院小组发布了全国性的禁令，在诉讼期间暂停特朗普的政策，并得出结论认为，这很可能违反了宪法和高等法院的先例。
“我已经做了40多年的法官。华盛顿西区的法官John Coughenour在今年1月的听证会上说，“我不记得还有哪一个案件的陈述像这里这样清楚。”。"这是一项公然违反宪法的命令。"
1898年，最高法院直接处理了在美国领土上出生的非公民子女的公民身份问题，在具有里程碑意义的case U.S. v Wong Kim Ark一案中裁定，根据法律，他们是美国人。
“[第14号]修正案用明确的语言和明显的意图，包括所有其他人在美国领土内出生的孩子，无论种族或肤色，居住在美国境内，”法官霍勒斯·格雷(Horace Gray)以6-2的多数写道。任何他国的公民或臣民，在美国居住时，都应受合众国的效忠和保护，并因此受其管辖。
这个问题以一种不同寻常的姿态回到了高等法院。
双方都没有向法官简要说明行政命令的合宪性。相反，主要的争议在于地区法院法官签发的禁令的范围。
卡托研究所(Cato Institute)的宪法学者伊利亚·索明(Ilya Somin)说，“它只关注法院针对总统极其违宪的行政命令发布全国性禁令是否合适，而不是局限于直接参与诉讼的人或居住在起诉政府的州的人的补救措施。”
特朗普政府抱怨说，法官应该只被允许阻止有争议的政策，因为它影响了提起诉讼的实际原告，而不是普遍阻止。
“只有法院的干预才能阻止普遍禁令被普遍接受，”代理副检察长萨拉·哈里斯在政府向法院提交的申请中写道。
政府重塑联邦政府、大幅削减联邦支出、改革移民政策以及限制对性少数群体人的保护的许多高调尝试，都被地区法院发布的全国性禁令所阻止。
来自两党政府的司法部律师长期以来一直抱怨过度使用全国性的禁令和所谓的对行政部门权力的侵犯。法院可以利用这一案例来阐明什么时候这种全面的禁令是正当的，什么时候不是。
哈里斯说:“本法院应该宣布，在地区法院对普遍禁令的日益依赖变得更加根深蒂固之前，已经够了。”他呼吁法官缩小适用于出生公民权秩序的禁令。
移民倡导者、民权组织和民主党州检察长警告说，在一些地方阻止特朗普与生俱来的公民权，但在其他地方不阻止——或者豁免一小部分原告，但不豁免其他人——将造成混乱。
“特朗普的命令对一些人有效，但对另一些人无效(或者，在一些州有效，但对其他州无效)，这种情况会造成明显的混乱和异常，”他说，“特别是在涉及一项应该在全国统一的政策(公民身份规则)时。”
一些法律学者表示，如果不解决特朗普试图重新定义出生公民权的潜在争议，法院可能无法解决全国禁令的问题。
“他们必须解决整个问题，”宪法学者、南德克萨斯法学院教授乔希·布莱克曼说。“避免禁令问题的唯一方法是根据是非曲直作出裁决。我相信他们会做出不利于特朗普的裁决。他可能会得到一两票，但不会比这更多。”
该案件的判决预计将在初夏做出。
What to know about birthright citizenship as Supreme Court weighs blocks on Trump's order to end it
The Supreme Court on Thursday heard oral arguments over President Donald Trump'semergency requestto roll back nationwide injunctions blocking his executive order to end birthright citizenship.
The rare May sitting of the court sets the stage fora decision by this summeron whether Trump can move forward with plans to limit U.S. citizenship only to children born on American soil to lawful permanent residents.
The case is also expected to address thelegality of individual district court judges single-handedly blocking a presidential policy nationwide.Trump is seeking to dissolve judicial orders preventingmass federal layoffs,funding freezes, and expediteddeportation protocols.
For more than a century, courts and the government have interpreted the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause to apply to anyone born in the U.S., regardless of the citizenship status of a child's parents.
TheAmendment, ratified after the Civil War, states that 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."
Solicitor General D. John Sauer kicked off the first Supreme Court oral argument over Trump's second-term policies by arguing that the ability of one district judge to issue a nationwide order creates a fundamentally unfair legal playing field for the government.
"Our primary contention is that the citizenship clause related to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens who weren't even present as a discrete class at that time," he told the justices.
Sauer said that national injunctions force district judges to rush their "high stakes, low information decisions," encourage forum shopping, and prevent the "percolation of novel and difficult legal questions."
"They operate asymmetrically, forcing the government to win everywhere, while the plaintiffs can win anywhere," said Sauer, who last year argued on behalf of Trump in a personal capacity to push for presidential immunity.
His claim was immediately met with skepticism from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who suggested that such a theory would not only limit the ability of the district court but also the Supreme Court from issuing nationwide relief.
"That makes no sense whatsoever," she said before making an analogy to when the balance of power shifts in Washington.
"When a new president orders that because there's so much gun violence going on in the country, and he comes in and he says, 'I have the right to take away the guns from everyone,' and he sends out the military to seize everyone's guns. We and the courts have to sit back and wait until every name plaintiff gets or every plaintiff whose gun is taken comes into court?" she asked.
On the issue of the legality of Trump's executive order to limit U.S. citizenship only to children born on American soil to lawful permanent residents, Sotomayor was clear on where she stood. The order, she said, was unlawful.
"As far as I see it, this order violates four Supreme Court precedents, and you are claiming that…both the Supreme Court and no lower court can stop an executive from universally violating those holdings by this court," Sotomayor said.
Both Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett pressed Sauer in a series of exchanges over whether eliminating nationwide injunctions could create a situation where unlawful executive orders are in place for too long a time before the Supreme Court can weigh in to rule on their legality.
"General Sauer, are you really going to answer Justice Kagan by saying there're no way to [stop the EO nationwide] expeditiously?" Barrett asked.
Sauer answered stating that using the normal process of the courts and applying clear cut Supreme Court precedent could ultimately settle such issues quickly.
The exchange came as Justice Kagan questioned whether the impact of abolishing nationwide injunctions would effectively inject more chaos in the court system by requiring individual plaintiffs -- like those subject to having their citizenship revoked by Trump's birthright executive order -- to file piecemeal lawsuits in courts across the country.
Sotomayor also pushed back against Sauer's arguments that the Supreme Court would benefit from the "percolation" of lower courts issuing opinions that would help the high court decide weighty issues over actions taken by the administration.
"We have most … courts who've percolated this issue and said, 'You're violating precedent, not only precedent, but the plain meaning of the 14th [Amendment] of the Constitution," she said.
"Respectfully, I think what we have are lower courts making snap judgments on the merits that ignore the fundamental principle of the 14th amendment -- that it was about giving citizenship to the children of slaves, not to the children of illegal immigrants," Sauer answered.
But some of the justices suggested that the impact of limiting nationwide injunctions might be bearable. Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the Supreme Court has gotten better at hearing cases "much more expeditiously," referencing how a legal challenge related to TikTok made its way through the court in a matter of months.
"We survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions," Justice Clarence Thomas added.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raised concerns that preventing federal judges from issuing nationwide orders would essentially create a "Catch Me If You Can" system of justice in which individual citizens can only protect their rights if they have the resources to file lawsuits.
"I don't understand how that is remotely consistent with the rule of law," she said.
Sauer argued that current system of nationwide injunction instead forces the Trump administration to race from court to court to win every case challenging their policies, citing the flurry of lawsuits and injunctions blocking the Pentagon's transgender service member ban.
"I think the 'Catch Me If You Can' problem operates in the opposite direction, where we have the government racing from jurisdiction to jurisdiction having to sort of clear the table in order to implement a new policy," he said.
The justice system, he argued, should work more slowly and allow the "percolation" of novel legal issues rather than rush to judgement, but Jackson pushed back, saying that delays could enable the enforcement of unlawful policies.
"If the government is saying no lower court can completely enjoin it, it actually means that the government just keeps on doing the purportedly unlawful thing, and it delays the ability for this court to reach the underlying issue," she said.
Kelsi Corkran, a senior lecturer at Georgetown University Law Center who was representing the individual plaintiffs, called the president's executive order on birthright citizenship "blatantly unlawful" and should be blocked because it violates the Constitution, federal law, and Supreme Court precedent.
"The government is wrong," she said. "It is well settled that preliminary injunctions may benefit nonparties when necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs or when warranted by extraordinary circumstances, both of which are true here."
Corkran argued that the nationwide orders should be allowed in issues involving "fundamental constitutional rights." Barring the legal relief outright, she said, would allow individuals to be irreparably harmed."It's a lose, lose, lose proposal that the government is offering," Corkran said.
Kagan suggested that the middle-ground approaches are unlikely to resolve the issue, though she acknowledged that the issue of nationwide injunctions has irritated presidents from both sides of the aisle and the high court.
"What's problematic about it is that the courts keep deciding the same way, and nobody really thinks that the lower courts are going to do anything different," she said.
On his first day in office, Trump signed anexecutive orderunilaterally declaring that only newborns whose parents have permanent legal status are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. and therefore eligible to be citizens.
"This administration believes that birthright citizenship is unconstitutional," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt explained during a February briefing.
Three different sets of plaintiffs sued to block the order, includinga group of 22 states, immigrant advocacy groups, and pregnant women whose soon-to-be-born children would be affected.
"Birthright citizenship is at the core of our Nation's foundational precept that all people born on our soil are created equal, regardless of their parentage," attorneys for the immigrant advocates wrote in legal briefs.
An estimated 150,000 children are born each year in the U.S. to parents who are not legal permanent residents, according to government data.
"Instead of the right to full participation and belonging in their home country -- the United States -- these children will be forced to live in the shadow," the states warned in court filings, "under the constant risk of deportation while the appeals run their course."
Federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state -- and three federal appeals court panels -- have issued nationwide injunctions keeping the Trump policy on hold during litigation, concluding that it very likely violates the Constitution and high court precedent.
"I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the case presented is as clear as it is here," said Judge John Coughenour of the Western District of Washington during a January hearing in the case. "This is a blatantly unconstitutional order."
In 1898, the Supreme Court directly addressed the question of citizenship for children born to non-citizens on U.S. soil, ruling in the landmark case U.S. v Wong Kim Ark that they are Americans under the law.
"The [14th] Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States," wrote Justice Horace Gray for the 6-2 majority. "Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States."
The issue arrives back at the high court in an unusual posture.
Neither side has briefed the justices on the constitutionality of the executive order. Instead, the primary dispute is over the scope of injunctions issued by individual district court judges.
"It focuses only on whether it is appropriate for courts to issue nationwide injunctions against the President's egregiously unconstitutional executive order, as opposed to remedies limited to people directly involved in the litigation or those living in states that have sued the government," said Ilya Somin, a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute.
The Trump administration has complained that judges should only be allowed to block a contested policy insofar as it impacts the actual plaintiffs who brought the case -- not block it universally.
"Only this Court's intervention can prevent universal injunctions from becoming universally acceptable," acting solicitor general Sarah Harris wrote in the government's application to the court.
Many of the administration's high-profile attempts to reshape the federal government, sharply curtail federal spending, transform immigration policy, and limit protections for LGBTQ people have been blocked by nationwide injunctions issued by district courts.
Justice Department attorneys from administrations of both political parties have long complained about the overuse of nationwide injunctions and alleged incursion on executive branch power. The court may use this case to articulate parameters for when such sweeping injunctions are warranted and when they are not.
"This Court should declare that enough is enough before district courts' burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched," Harris said, calling on the justices to narrow the injunctions applied to the birthright citizenship order.
Immigrant advocates, civil rights organizations, and Democratic state attorneys general have warned that blocking Trump's birthright citizenship in some places but not others -- or, exempting a small group of plaintiffs but not others -- would create chaos.
"A situation where Trump's order is in force for some people, but not others (or, alternatively, in some states but not others), creates obvious confusion and anomalies," he said, "especially when it comes to a policy (citizenship rules) that is supposed to be uniform throughout the nation."
Some legal scholars say it may be impossible for the court to address the question of nationwide injunctions without also resolving the underlying dispute over Trump's attempt to redefine birthright citizenship.
"They're going to have to address the whole thing," said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law scholar and professor at South Texas College of Law. "The only way to avoid the scope of the injunction question is to rule on the merits. I believe they're going to rule against Trump. He gets maybe one or two votes but not much more than that."
A decision in the case is expected by early summer.
