SCOTUS to Hear Trump Birthright Case   04/01 06:34

   The Supreme Court is taking up one of the term's most consequential cases, 
President Donald Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship declaring 
that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or 
temporarily are not American citizens. Trump plans to be in attendance.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court is taking up one of the term's most 
consequential cases, President Donald Trump's executive order on birthright 
citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United 
States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens. Trump plans to be in 
attendance.

   In arguments Wednesday, the justices will hear Trump's appeal of a 
lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship 
restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them. They have not taken 
effect anywhere in the country.

   A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.

   Trump will be the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the 
nation's highest court.

   The case frames another test of his assertions of executive power that defy 
long-standing precedent for a court that has largely ruled in the president's 
favor, but with some notable exceptions that Trump has responded to with 
starkly personal criticisms of the justices.

   The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed the first day of his 
second term, is part of his Republican administration's broad immigration 
crackdown.

   Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to 
reach the court for a final ruling. The justices previously struck down global 
tariffs Trump had imposed under an emergency powers law that had never been 
used that way.

   Trump reacted furiously to the late February tariffs' decision, saying he 
was ashamed of the justices who ruled against him and calling them unpatriotic.

   He issued a preemptive broadside against the court on Sunday on his Truth 
Social. "Birthright Citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the 
rest of the World, who want their children, and hundreds of thousands more, FOR 
PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America. It is 
about the BABIES OF SLAVES!," the president wrote. "Dumb Judges and Justices 
will not a great Country make!"

   Trump's order would upend the longstanding view that the Constitution's 14th 
Amendment, ratified in 1868, and federal law since 1940 confer citizenship on 
everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of 
foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.

   The 14th Amendment was intended to ensure that Black people, including 
former slaves, had citizenship, though the Citizenship Clause is written more 
broadly. "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," it reads.

   In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order 
as illegal, or likely so, under the Constitution and federal law. The decisions 
have invoked the high court's 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which held that the 
U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.

   The administration argues that the common view of citizenship is wrong, 
asserting that children of noncitizens are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of 
the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

   The court should use the case to set straight "long-enduring misconceptions 
about the Constitution's meaning," Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote.

   No court has accepted that argument, and lawyers for pregnant women whose 
children would be affected by the order said the Supreme Court should not be 
the first to do so.

   "We have the president of the United States trying to radically reinterpret 
the definition of American citizenship," said Cecillia Wang, the American Civil 
Liberties Union legal director who is facing off against Sauer at the Supreme 
Court.

   More than one-quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year would 
be affected by the executive order, according to research by the Migration 
Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University's Population Research 
Institute.

   While Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his rhetoric and 
actions, the birthright restrictions also would apply to people who are legally 
in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards, or 
permanent resident status.