Washington – The Trump administration's lawyers sent the Supreme Court An emergency call This week with a “modest” procedural request in order not to maintain new limits to the birth law of citizenship, but rather restrict the scope of the decisions that conquer the limits in effect.
It is a step that surprised and confused many legal experts.
They questioned the practicality and fairness of a citizenship rule, which was at least temporarily used in some parts of the country, but not in others.
“This is a terrible case to attract this problem,” said Amanda Frost Amanda Frost Frost from the University of Virginia. “Without a nationwide injunction, it would be chaos.”
She said pregnant women had to exceed the state limits to ensure that their babies were registered as a citizen at birth. The judges may have to decide whether these birth registrations are appropriate.
Shortly after President Trump had issued his executive regulation to propose to end citizenship, three judges – in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington State – said the change nationwide. They ruled in cases that brought in 22 states, including California, and several groups represented by immigrants.
“If a universal injunction has ever made sense, it is in such a case,” said George Mason University Professor Ilya Somin wrote in a blog post. “The national government's nationwide legislation requires a nationwide legal remedy. And this applies in particular if the illegality influences the rights of a large number of people, many of whom could not bring individual suits easily or quickly to challenge them. “
However, the Trump administration's lawyers argued that district judges should not be allowed to make decisions that apply nationwide. And they said the court should now act to contain these judges.
If the judges were agreed, it could refuse citizenship in large parts of the nation without legal status in the country without legal status.
“Years of experience has shown that the executive cannot properly perform their functions if a judge can take any presidential campaign anywhere,” wrote General Sarah M. Harris. “The earlier universal systems root and branch eliminated, the better.”
However, the judges signaled that they are not ready to move quickly. They found April 4 as a deadline for answers from the lawyers who won the decisions that Blocked Trump's command for birth law citizenship.
In recent years, several judges have questioned the authority of a single judge to hand over a decision that applies nationwide.
Sometimes the judges try to “rule the whole nation from their court halls,” said Justice Neil M. Gorsuch last year.
The Democrats complained when the judges in Texas and Louisiana made nationwide decisions to block the provisions of the bidges.
Two years ago, a conservative judge in Amarillo, Texas, ordered a nationwide ban on abortion pills. The Supreme Court blocked its arrangement and then completely overturned him on the grounds that the anti -start -off plaintiff could not sue.
During Trump's first term, the Republicans complained when the judges in San Francisco and New York blocked his regulations, including the travel ban, which visited several districts of the Muslim majority.
Harris said the problem was worse.
“Universal yields have reached epidemic dimensions since the beginning of the current administration,” she wrote. “In February 2025 alone, district courts issued more universal orders in February 2025 than in the first three years of bidges.”
Much of the difference can be attributed to the unusual number of far -reaching executive commands in Trump's first weeks of office.
The appeals of this week do not ask the court to weigh the underlying dispute over the importance of the 14th change after the civil war. It says: “All people born or naturalized in the United States and are subject to their responsibility are citizens of the United States and the state in which they live.”
This citizenship based at birth was well established and was not seriously questioned in the courts.
But Trump and his supporters claim that some authors of the 14th change did not think they extended to children who were born by women who are temporarily in the country.
Trump's executive orderIf it becomes law, two changes would make. It would refuse citizenship if the mother of the “mother was present in the United States” and the father was not a US citizen or a lawful constant resident or if the mother was legally but temporarily in the country, such as a student or tourist visa.
The appeal of the administration could enable these changes to become effective in a large part of the country.
However, if the judges are not willing to maintain these changes, Harris suggested a fallback option.
The judges, she wrote, “at least” should make it clear that the administration is developing and “explains instructions on how to implement the civil regulations if it becomes effective”.