WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow restrictions on birthright citizenship to take effect partly while legal fights play out.
At the high court, emergency applications were filed on Thursday. The justices were asked by the administration to narrow court orders that were entered by the district judges in Washington, Massachusetts, and Maryland that kept President Donald Trump from signing the order shortly after the start of his second term.
The administration's pleas have been rejected by three federal appeals courts, including one in Massachusetts on Tuesday. The order is currently blocked nationwide.
The order would forbid U.S. agencies from accepting any state document or issuing any document recognizing citizenship for such children. The order would also deny citizenship to individuals born after Feb. 19 whose parents are in the country illegally.
Roughly two dozen states and several individuals and groups have sued over the executive order, stating that the order violates the Constitution’s 14th Amendment promise of citizenship to anyone born inside the United States.
Five conservative justices, a majority of the court, have raised concerns in the past about nationwide or universal injunctions. But the court has never ruled on the matter.
The pace of the activity also reflects how fast Trump moved, less than two months in office, to roll back the rights of transgender people, restrict birthright citizenship, upend tens of billions of dollars in domestic and foreign aid, and fire thousands of federal workers.
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