For the sake of the Union, the US Supreme Court must show its judicial mettle soon by taking the bull by the horns.
Or else, the lingering issue regarding birthright citizenship will cause a great divide between the red and the blue states of the Union.
Last week, the US Supreme Court issued a decision which, in a major victory for the Trump administration, emasculates the judicial power of the federal district courts by restricting their authority to block enforcement of a President’s executive actions.
According to the Court, such authority exists only within the confines of a district court’s territorial jurisdiction, or at least in effect is limited to the parties involved in the lawsuit, eschewing the longstanding practice of allowing district courts to issue nationwide injunctions.
While exceptions pertaining to class action lawsuits and state government filings have been preserved, and despite the decision’s general applicability to all types of judicial controversies, its relevance, nay, negative ramifications, vis-à-vis the hot button issue of birthright citizenship cannot be overemphasized.
Prior to the Supreme Court’s precedent-setting decision, federal district court judges in the blue states of Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington, acting on the legal challenges filed by Democratic officials, issued separate rulings declaring the President’s executive order abolishing the birthright citizenship of children born to undocumented immigrants and people with short-term visas unconstitutional.
They also issued nationwide injunctions blocking the order’s implementation while the appeal processes were ongoing.
As a countermove, the Trump administration filed a direct, emergency appeal to the US Supreme Court questioning not the legality of the lower courts’ decisions on the merits but the legal propriety of issuing nationwide injunctions (as opposed to localized or limited orders of stay).
By a 6-3 conservative majority decision, the Court sided with the White House.
Unfortunately for the Union and its inhabitants, the decision portends an incongruously absurd situation in which children of undocumented immigrants or those with short-term visas born in states outside the scope of a district court’s injunctive order, mostly Republican-leaning jurisdictions, are deprived of American citizenship by birth, while those born in nearby locations are not.
For example, and assuming that no superseding event will derail execution of the decision’s 30-day effectivity mandate, babies to be born in the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia next month will have vastly different citizenship outcomes.
Because Maryland is a state covered by an injunctive relief, the offspring of non-US citizen and non-US permanent resident parents born therein will be accorded American citizenship at birth.
On the other hand, those born a few miles or even just a few steps away in an adjacent town in Virginia will have a different fate.
At last count, 28 Republican-leaning jurisdictions are receptive to enforcing the new citizenship measure versus 22 defiant blue states.
While a number of corrective legal filings have been initiated to satisfy the new nationwide injunction criteria, it remains to be seen whether or not any superseding relief will issue before the 30-day deadline.
In the meantime, everyone is keeping their fingers crossed that the Supreme Court, despite all the political noise, will soon rule with finality on the constitutionality of the subject order.
Until then, the country will continue to be hounded by the specter of a Divided States of America.