US President can’t end birthright citizenship
A US appeals court on Wednesday let stand an order blocking President Donald Trump from curtailing automatic birthright citizenship nationwide as part of the Republican’s hardline crackdown on immigration and illegal border crossings.
The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s request for an emergency order putting on hold a nationwide injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle blocking the president’s executive order.
It was the first time an appellate court had weighed in on Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, whose fate may ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court. Judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire have likewise blocked it, and appeals are underway already in two of those cases.
Unconstitutional
Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in the White House on January 20, directed US agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States after Wednesday if neither their mother nor father was a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Trump’s US Justice Department had asked the 9th Circuit to by Thursday largely stay a ruling by Seattle-based US District Judge John Coughenour declaring the policy unconstitutional, saying he went too far by issuing a nationwide injunction at the behest of four Democratic-led states.
‘No obvious emergency’
But a three-judge panel declined to do so and instead set the case down for arguments in June.
US Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest, who Trump appointed during his first term, in a concurring opinion said a rapid ruling would risk eroding public confidence in judges who must “reach their decisions apart from ideology or political preference.”
“Nor do the circumstances themselves demonstrate an obvious emergency where it appears that the exception to birthright citizenship urged by the Government has never been recognized by the judiciary,” she wrote.
