A federal appeals court panel has denied the Trump administration’s emergency bid to overturn an order blocking President Donald Trump’s effort to restrict birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants and short-term U.S. visitors, teeing up another potential race to the Supreme Court.
Legal Roadblocks
The 3-0 ruling Wednesday from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals maintains for now a Seattle-based federal District Court judge’s order blocking Trump’s policy nationwide. That judge, Reagan appointee John Coughenour, upbraided Trump for seeking to upend more than a century of settled case law on birthright citizenship.
Implications of the Ruling
Even if Trump had won at the appeals court Wednesday, his birthright citizenship order would have remained on ice because federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire have also issued rulings halting the directive. Still, the rejection by the appeals court panel gives Trump a chance to put the issue before the Supreme Court, perhaps in a matter of days.
Judicial Perspectives
Despite the unanimous result at the 9th Circuit denying the stay the Trump administration sought, there was some disagreement on the panel.
Carter appointee William Canby and George W. Bush appointee Milan Smith gave little reasoning for their decision except to say that the Trump administration had not made a “strong showing” that its legal argument was likely to succeed.
However, Trump appointee Danielle Forrest said the court should not have opined on that question at this juncture. In a six-page concurrence, she also decried federal courts’ willingness to wade into issues on an emergency basis — an implicit criticism of the wave of such emergency orders that barred Trump policies in recent weeks.
Key Considerations
Forrest agreed that the Trump administration had not provided enough of a basis to lift Coughenour’s injunction but stressed the lack of urgency rather than the substance of the legal arguments. The administration’s claim that the original order “stymied the implementation of an Executive Branch policy … nationwide for almost three weeks” was “insufficient,” Forrest concluded.
“It is routine for both executive and legislative policies to be challenged in court, particularly where a new policy is a significant shift from prior understanding and practice,” the judge wrote.
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