Trump s Bid to End Birthright Citizenship Reaches the Supreme Court – WSJ

WASHINGTON President Trump s bid to abolish birthright citizenship sparked more than two hours of oral argument Thursday at the Supreme Court, where justices wrestled less with the legality of his decree than with the propriety of federal judges blocking administration policies nationwide.

Three federal courts have blocked Trump s citizenship order, but the administration asked the Supreme Court only to limit the scope of their injunctions to the named litigants in those cases. That procedural issue dominated the arguments, but the real world implications formed the backdrop: potentially granting citizenship to children born to unauthorized migrants in some states, but denying it to those born in others, while litigation over the Constitution s meaning winds out over months or years.

Conservative justices focused on the growing modern-day approach of judges in single federal districts blocking a presidential policy for the entire U.S. 

Justice Samuel Alito observed there are 680 federal district judges, and said that sometimes they re wrong. Allowing a single one of them to freeze a presidential policy nationwide was a problem, he said, without regard to administration: It could be President Trump, it could be President Biden, it could be President Obama.

But liberals suggested the danger would be allowing the government to violate rights on a massive scale with no effective judicial remedy.

via www.wsj.com