Trump's Attempt to End Birthright Citizenship Blocked by Appeals Court

A US federal appeals court has upheld a previous ruling, dismissing former President Donald Trump’s executive order which sought to limit birthright citizenship. 

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined the order, signed immediately after Mr Trump's inauguration, contravenes the US Constitution. The contentious order aimed to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are undocumented or present on temporary visas. Legal challenges arose swiftly across the country, resulting in multiple injunctions to prevent its enactment. 

The Ninth Circuit’s decision reinforces the consensus that the order violates the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which guarantees citizenship to "all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

The appellate panel said that the district court's conclusion, interpreting the executive order as denying citizenship to many born in the US, was correct and unconstitutional. 

A dissenting view from a Trump appointee contested the states' legal standing but did not challenge the constitutional merits of the order itself. Judges appointed under President Bill Clinton penned the majority opinion. The Trump administration had anticipated using a recent Supreme Court ruling to curtail nationwide injunctions issued by lower courts. However, the Ninth Circuit concluded that an exception applied, given the widespread impact of the executive order. 

Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon, the states involved, argued that a fragmented application of citizenship rules would create untenable legal and administrative problems. Birthright citizenship, secured by the 14th Amendment, is a key principle of American law. The 1898 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark reinforced this. The ruling affirmed the citizenship of a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, even amidst the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Mr Trump's order represented the most aggressive mainstream challenge to birthright citizenship in decades, reviving a debate simmering on the political fringes since the early 1990s. The Supreme Court has yet to rule directly on the order’s constitutionality.