Latest news with #U.S.SupremeCourt
Straits Times
23 minutes ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Immigrants scramble for clarity after Supreme Court birthright ruling
FILE PHOTO: The U.S. Supreme Court building is seen in Washington, U.S., May 20, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo FILE PHOTO: A ball lies stuck on the fencing at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility, where Venezuelans at the center of a Supreme Court ruling on deportation are held, in Anson, Texas, U.S. April 22, 2025. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling tied to birthright citizenship prompted confusion and phone calls to lawyers as people who could be affected tried to process a convoluted legal decision with major humanitarian implications. The court's conservative majority on Friday granted President Donald Trump his request to curb federal judges' power but did not decide the legality of his bid to restrict birthright citizenship. That outcome has raised more questions than answers about a right long understood to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution: that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents' citizenship or legal status. Lorena, a 24-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who lives in Houston and is due to give birth in September, pored over media reports on Friday morning. She was looking for details about how her baby might be affected, but said she was left confused and worried. "There are not many specifics," said Lorena, who like others interviewed by Reuters asked to be identified by her first name out of fear for her safety. "I don't understand it well." She is concerned that her baby could end up with no nationality. "I don't know if I can give her mine," she said. "I also don't know how it would work, if I can add her to my asylum case. I don't want her to be adrift with no nationality." Trump, a Republican, issued an order after taking office in January that directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order was blocked by three separate U.S. district court judges, sending the case on a path to the Supreme Court. The resulting decision said Trump's policy could go into effect in 30 days but appeared to leave open the possibility of further proceedings in the lower courts that could keep the policy blocked. On Friday afternoon, plaintiffs filed an amended lawsuit in federal court in Maryland seeking to establish a nationwide class of people whose children could be denied citizenship. If they are not blocked nationwide, the restrictions could be applied in the 28 states that did not contest them in court, creating "an extremely confusing patchwork" across the country, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst for the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. "Would individual doctors, individual hospitals be having to try to figure out how to determine the citizenship of babies and their parents?" she said. The drive to restrict birthright citizenship is part of Trump's broader immigration crackdown, and he has framed automatic citizenship as a magnet for people to come to give birth. "Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn't meant for that reason," he said during a White House press briefing on Friday. WORRIED CALLS Immigration advocates and lawyers in some Republican-led states said they received calls from a wide range of pregnant immigrants and their partners following the ruling. They were grappling with how to explain it to clients who could be dramatically affected, given all the unknowns of how future litigation would play out or how the executive order would be implemented state by state. Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said she got a call on Friday from an East Asian temporary visa holder with a pregnant wife. He was anxious because Ohio is not one of the plaintiff states and wanted to know how he could protect his child's rights. "He kept stressing that he was very interested in the rights included in the Constitution," she said. Advocates underscored the gravity of Trump's restrictions, which would block an estimated 150,000 children born in the U.S. annually from receiving automatic citizenship. "It really creates different classes of people in the country with different types of rights," said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a spokesperson for the immigrant rights organization United We Dream. "That is really chaotic." Adding uncertainty, the Supreme Court ruled that members of two plaintiff groups in the litigation - CASA, an immigrant advocacy service in Maryland, and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project - would still be covered by lower court blocks on the policy. Whether someone in a state where Trump's policy could go into effect could join one of the organizations to avoid the restrictions or how state or federal officials would check for membership remained unclear. Betsy, a U.S. citizen who recently graduated from high school in Virginia and a CASA member, said both of her parents came to the U.S. from El Salvador two decades ago and lacked legal status when she was born. "I feel like it targets these innocent kids who haven't even been born," she said, declining to give her last name for concerns over her family's safety. Nivida, a Honduran asylum seeker in Louisiana, is a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and recently gave birth. She heard on Friday from a friend without legal status who is pregnant and wonders about the situation under Louisiana's Republican governor, since the state is not one of those fighting Trump's order. "She called me very worried and asked what's going to happen," she said. "If her child is born in Louisiana … is the baby going to be a citizen?" REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
23 minutes ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Trump wins as Supreme Court curbs judges, but may yet lose on birthright citizenship
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Democratic Republic of the Congo's Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner and Rwanda's Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington D.C., June 27, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno/File Photo Trump wins as Supreme Court curbs judges, but may yet lose on birthright citizenship WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling blunting a potent weapon that federal judges have used to block government policies nationwide during legal challenges was in many ways a victory for President Donald Trump, except perhaps on the very policy he is seeking to enforce. An executive order that the Republican president signed on his first day back in office in January would restrict birthright citizenship - a far-reaching plan that three federal judges, questioning its constitutionality, quickly halted nationwide through so-called "universal" injunctions. But the Supreme Court's ruling on Friday, while announcing a dramatic shift in how judges have operated for years deploying such relief, left enough room for the challengers to Trump's directive to try to prevent it from taking effect while litigation over its legality plays out. "I do not expect the president's executive order on birthright citizenship will ever go into effect," said Samuel Bray, a Notre Dame Law School professor and a prominent critic of universal injunctions whose work the court's majority cited extensively in Friday's ruling. Trump's executive order directs federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. The three judges found that the order likely violates citizenship language in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. The directive remains blocked while lower courts reconsider the scope of their injunctions, and the Supreme Court said it cannot take effect for 30 days, a window that gives the challengers time to seek further protection from those courts. The court's six conservative justices delivered the majority ruling, granting Trump's request to narrow the injunctions issued by the judges in Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts. Its three liberal members dissented. The ruling by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump appointed to the court in 2020, emphasized the need to hem in the power of judges, warning against an "imperial" judiciary. Judges can provide "complete relief" only to the plaintiffs before them, Barrett wrote. A HOST OF POLICIES That outcome was a major victory for Trump and his allies, who have repeatedly denounced judges who have impeded his agenda. It could make it easier for the administration to implement his policies, including to accelerate deportations of migrants, restrict transgender rights, curtail diversity and inclusion efforts, and downsize the federal government - many of which have tested the limits of executive power. In the birthright citizenship dispute, the ruling left open the potential for individual plaintiffs to seek relief beyond themselves through class action lawsuits targeting a policy that would upend the long-held understanding that the Constitution confers citizenship on virtually anyone born on U.S. soil. Bray said he expects a surge of new class action cases, resulting in "class-protective" injunctions. "Given that the birthright-citizenship executive order is unconstitutional, I expect courts will grant those preliminary injunctions, and they will be affirmed on appeal," Bray said. Some of the challengers have already taken that path. Plaintiffs in the Maryland case, including expectant mothers and immigrant advocacy groups, asked the presiding judge who had issued a universal injunction to treat the case as a class action to protect all children who would be ineligible for birthright citizenship if the executive order takes effect. "I think in terms of the scope of the relief that we'll ultimately get, there is no difference," said William Powell, one of the lawyers for the Maryland plaintiffs. "We're going to be able to get protection through the class action for everyone in the country whose baby could potentially be covered by the executive order, assuming we succeed." The ruling also sidestepped a key question over whether states that bring lawsuits might need an injunction that applies beyond their borders to address their alleged harms, directing lower courts to answer it first. STATES CHALLENGE DIRECTIVE The challenge to Trump's directive also included 22 states, most of them Democratic-governed, who argued that the financial and administrative burdens they would face required a nationwide block on Trump's order. George Mason University constitutional law expert Ilya Somin said the practical consequences of the ruling will depend on various issues not decided so far by the Supreme Court. "As the majority recognizes, states may be entitled to much broader relief than individuals or private groups," Somin said. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, a Democrat who helped lead the case brought in Massachusetts, disagreed with the ruling but sketched out a path forward on Friday. The ruling, Platkin said in a statement, "recognized that nationwide orders can be appropriate to protect the plaintiffs themselves from harm - which is true, and has always been true, in our case." Platkin committed to "keep challenging President Trump's flagrantly unlawful order, which strips American babies of citizenship for the first time since the Civil War" of 1861-1865. Legal experts said they expect a lot of legal maneuvering in lower courts in the weeks ahead, and the challengers still face an uphill battle. Compared to injunctions in individual cases, class actions are often harder to successfully mount. States, too, still do not know whether they have the requisite legal entitlement to sue. Trump's administration said they do not, but the court left that debate unresolved. Meanwhile, the 30-day clock is ticking. If the challengers are unsuccessful going forward, Trump's order could apply in some parts of the country, but not others. "The ruling is set to go into effect 30 days from now and leaves families in states across the country in deep uncertainty about whether their children will be born as U.S. citizens," said Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School's immigrants' rights clinic. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Hindustan Times
38 minutes ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Immigrants scramble for clarity after Supreme Court birthright ruling
* Immigrants scramble for clarity after Supreme Court birthright ruling Supreme Court ruling causes confusion over birthright citizenship * Lawyers and advocates field calls from anxious clients * Uncertainty remains on policy across different states By Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke WASHINGTON, - The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling tied to birthright citizenship prompted confusion and phone calls to lawyers as people who could be affected tried to process a convoluted legal decision with major humanitarian implications. The court's conservative majority on Friday granted President Donald Trump his request to curb federal judges' power but did not decide the legality of his bid to restrict birthright citizenship. That outcome has raised more questions than answers about a right long understood to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution: that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents' citizenship or legal status. Lorena, a 24-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who lives in Houston and is due to give birth in September, pored over media reports on Friday morning. She was looking for details about how her baby might be affected, but said she was left confused and worried. "There are not many specifics," said Lorena, who like others interviewed by Reuters asked to be identified by her first name out of fear for her safety. "I don't understand it well." She is concerned that her baby could end up with no nationality. "I don't know if I can give her mine," she said. "I also don't know how it would work, if I can add her to my asylum case. I don't want her to be adrift with no nationality." Trump, a Republican, issued an order after taking office in January that directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order was blocked by three separate U.S. district court judges, sending the case on a path to the Supreme Court. The resulting decision said Trump's policy could go into effect in 30 days but appeared to leave open the possibility of further proceedings in the lower courts that could keep the policy blocked. On Friday afternoon, plaintiffs filed an amended lawsuit in federal court in Maryland seeking to establish a nationwide class of people whose children could be denied citizenship. If they are not blocked nationwide, the restrictions could be applied in the 28 states that did not contest them in court, creating "an extremely confusing patchwork" across the country, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst for the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. "Would individual doctors, individual hospitals be having to try to figure out how to determine the citizenship of babies and their parents?" she said. The drive to restrict birthright citizenship is part of Trump's broader immigration crackdown, and he has framed automatic citizenship as a magnet for people to come to give birth. "Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn't meant for that reason," he said during a White House press briefing on Friday. WORRIED CALLS Immigration advocates and lawyers in some Republican-led states said they received calls from a wide range of pregnant immigrants and their partners following the ruling. They were grappling with how to explain it to clients who could be dramatically affected, given all the unknowns of how future litigation would play out or how the executive order would be implemented state by state. Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said she got a call on Friday from an East Asian temporary visa holder with a pregnant wife. He was anxious because Ohio is not one of the plaintiff states and wanted to know how he could protect his child's rights. "He kept stressing that he was very interested in the rights included in the Constitution," she said. Advocates underscored the gravity of Trump's restrictions, which would block an estimated 150,000 children born in the U.S. annually from receiving automatic citizenship. "It really creates different classes of people in the country with different types of rights," said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a spokesperson for the immigrant rights organization United We Dream. "That is really chaotic." Adding uncertainty, the Supreme Court ruled that members of two plaintiff groups in the litigation - CASA, an immigrant advocacy service in Maryland, and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project - would still be covered by lower court blocks on the policy. Whether someone in a state where Trump's policy could go into effect could join one of the organizations to avoid the restrictions or how state or federal officials would check for membership remained unclear. Betsy, a U.S. citizen who recently graduated from high school in Virginia and a CASA member, said both of her parents came to the U.S. from El Salvador two decades ago and lacked legal status when she was born. "I feel like it targets these innocent kids who haven't even been born," she said, declining to give her last name for concerns over her family's safety. Nivida, a Honduran asylum seeker in Louisiana, is a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and recently gave birth. She heard on Friday from a friend without legal status who is pregnant and wonders about the situation under Louisiana's Republican governor, since the state is not one of those fighting Trump's order. "She called me very worried and asked what's going to happen," she said. "If her child is born in Louisiana … is the baby going to be a citizen?" This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
The Sun
an hour ago
- Politics
- The Sun
US Supreme Court backs Trump in key ruling on injunctions
WASHINGTON: The U.S. Supreme Court on the last day of rulings for its current term gave Donald Trump his latest in a series of victories at the nation's top judicial body, one that may make it easier for him to implement contentious elements of his sweeping agenda as he tests the limits of presidential power. With its six conservative members in the majority and its three liberals dissenting, the court on Friday curbed the ability of judges to impede his policies nationwide, resetting the power balance between the federal judiciary and presidents. The ruling came after the Republican president's administration asked the Supreme Court to narrow the scope of so-called 'universal' injunctions issued by three federal judges that halted nationally the enforcement of his January executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The court's decision has 'systematically weakened judicial oversight and strengthened executive discretion,' said Paul Rosenzweig, an attorney who served in Republican President George W. Bush's administration. Friday's ruling said that judges generally can grant relief only to the individuals or groups who brought a particular lawsuit. The decision did not, however, permit immediate implementation of Trump's directive, instead instructing lower courts to reconsider the scope of the injunctions. The ruling was authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of three conservative justices who Trump appointed during his first term in office from 2017-2021. Trump has scored a series of victories at the Supreme Court since returning to office in January. These have included clearing the way for his administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face and ending temporary legal status held by hundreds of thousands of migrants on humanitarian grounds. The court also permitted implementation of Trump's ban on transgender people in the military, let his administration withhold payment to foreign aid groups for work already performed for the government, allowed his firing of two Democratic members of federal labor boards to stand for now, and backed his Department of Government Efficiency in two disputes. 'A BULLY PULPIT' 'President Trump secured the relief he sought in most of his administration's cases,' George Mason University law school professor Robert Luther III said. 'Justice Barrett's opinion is a win for the presidency,' Luther said of the decision on nationwide injunctions. 'It recognizes that the executive branch is a bully pulpit with a wide range of authorities to implement the promises of a campaign platform.' Once again, as with many of the term's major decisions, the three liberal justices found themselves in dissent, a familiar position as the court under the guidance of Chief Justice John Roberts continues to shift American law rightward. The rulings in favor of Trump illustrate that 'the court's three most liberal justices are proving less relevant now than at any earlier point in the Roberts Court with respect to their impact on its jurisprudence,' Luther said. The cases involving Trump administration policies this year came to the court as emergency filings rather than through the normal process, with oral arguments held only in the birthright litigation. And those arguments did not focus on the legality of Trump's action but rather on the actions of the judges who found that it was likely unconstitutional. 'One theme is the court's struggle to keep pace with a faster-moving legal world, especially as the Trump administration tests the outer boundaries of its powers,' Boston College Law School professor Daniel Lyons said. In other cases during the nine-month term, the court sided with a Republican-backed ban in Tennessee on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, endorsed South Carolina's plan to cut off public funding to reproductive healthcare and abortion provider Planned Parenthood, and made it easier to pursue claims alleging workplace 'reverse' discrimination. The court also spared two American gun companies from the Mexican government's lawsuit accusing them of aiding illegal firearms trafficking to drug cartels, and allowed parents to opt elementary school children out of classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read. 'NOT THE COURT'S ROLE' In several cases involving federal statutes, the message from the justices is that people unhappy with the outcome need to take that up with Congress, according to Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson. 'The court is implicitly saying, 'That's Congress' problem to fix, and it's not the court's role to solve those issues,'' Levinson said. This is the second straight year that the court ended its term with a decision handing Trump a major victory. On July 1, 2024, it ruled in favor of Trump in deciding that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official actions taken in office. It marked the first time that the court recognized any form of presidential immunity from prosecution. The Supreme Court's next term begins in October but Trump's administration still has some emergency requests pending that the justices could act upon at any time. It has asked the court to halt a judicial order blocking mass federal job cuts and the restructuring of agencies. It also has asked the justices to rein in the judge handling a case involving deportations to so-called 'third countries.' Recent rulings 'have really shown the court for what it is, which is a deeply conservative court,' Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis said. The court's jurisprudence reflects a larger shift in the national discourse, with Republicans feeling they have the political capital to achieve long-sought aims, Kreis said. The court's conservative majority, Kreis said, 'is probably feeling more emboldened to act.'
USA Today
3 hours ago
- Health
- USA Today
Planned Parenthood isn't the only loser in Supreme Court case. Women lose, too.
While Democrats have shied away from talking about abortion since the 2024 presidential election, it is still an issue Republicans are rallying around. Almost three years to the day since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the justices have once again made a decision that will limit access to reproductive care. This time, they're explicitly coming after Planned Parenthood. On Thursday, June 26, the Supreme Court ruled in a decision that could allow states to keep Medicaid dollars from the organization. In the 6-3 ruling, the justices determined that individuals could not sue to choose their health care provider after a patient sued South Carolina to receive reproductive care from Planned Parenthood. By making this decision, the courts are potentially shutting Planned Parenthood out of millions of dollars that would go to necessary health care options like birth control, cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted infections. It's a ruling that, like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed out in her dissent, is going to harm people who rely on Planned Parenthood for their care. The plan was always to end abortion in every state It's just another instance of conservatives ignoring the realities of women's health care in favor of their beliefs, and a reminder that abortion continues to be a Republican target. It's also a reminder that we'll be living in this dystopian health care nightmare for a very, very long time. While Democrats have shied away from talking about abortion since the 2024 presidential election, it is still an issue Republicans are rallying around. They were never going to be satisfied with simply returning abortion rights back to the states, the plan was always to eradicate the health care procedure nationwide. Opinion: Who would want to have babies under a Trump administration? Not me. In May, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the Food and Drug Administration to review mifepristone, an abortion medication, because of a study from a conservative think tank that relies on flawed data. The majority of abortions in 2023 were medication abortions. If mifepristone were suddenly taken off the market, it would have huge ramifications for patients across the country. Planned Parenthood was also already struggling after President Donald Trump froze federal funding to more than 100 clinics earlier this year. It has led clinics across the country to shut down. His One Big Beautiful Bill Act also would block Medicaid patients from seeking care at Planned Parenthood, which could lead to more closures. None of this is happening in a vacuum. All of these Republican attacks amount to a nationwide assault on abortion rights, no matter where one is located in the country. Millions of people could soon lose access to the care they need because of the Republican agenda. Abortion bans aren't working. Defunding Planned Parenthood won't change that. Despite these targeted attacks on abortion, the procedure hasn't become less popular in the years following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision. In 2024, there was actually an increase in abortions, with a quarter of those procedures occurring via telehealth for medication. Public opinion on abortion has remained steady, with Pew Research Center reporting that 63% of Americans supported abortion in all or most cases in 2024. Opinion: Democrats don't need to move to the center. Mamdani proves progressives can win. Clearly, Republican leaders are only listening to a small subset of their constituency when they decide to go after Planned Parenthood. They do not listen to the millions of people who have benefited from the wide range of services that the organization provides. Instead, they would rather spread falsehoods about abortion and how it is funded. They will not be happy until abortions are nearly impossible to obtain, even when someone's life is at risk. The Supreme Court's latest cruel decision shows that we are still living with the long-term repercussions of having Trump nominate three justices to the bench. And this is just the beginning. It's clear nothing is going to stop Republicans from attacking Planned Parenthood until it's unable to function because of a lack of government funding. It's shameful that they continue to put a political agenda ahead of the health care needs of women. It's also not changing anytime soon. Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno
