The Supreme Court on Thursday announced a significant adjustment to its calendar: It’s adding a court session on May 15 to hear arguments on President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order.
The order aims to ban automatic citizenship for babies born in the United States to immigrants living in the country illegally and foreign visitors.
Trump signed it on his first day in office in January, and it quickly became the subject of several lawsuits.
The order’s opponents say it clearly violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Its supporters, on the other hand, say that the 14th Amendment has been misinterpreted.
“Trump and his allies say they have the authority to ban birthright citizenship because unauthorized immigrants are in the country without permanent legal status and, therefore, are not ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the U.S. government," per The Washington Post.
Trump’s birthright citizenship order is currently on hold nationwide due to multiple lower court rulings. The Supreme Court decided to hear oral arguments after being asked by the Trump administration to lift or adjust the existing nationwide injunctions.
“The administration had asked the justices to limit those lower-court orders to the individuals or states behind the lawsuits while the cases make their way through the court system, or to at least allow the relevant federal agencies to begin developing plans and issuing public guidance for banning birthright citizenship if Trump’s effort eventually passes legal muster," The Washington Post reported.
The challengers that won the injunctions have argued that a nationwide injunction is necessary to avoid the legal chaos of allowing different states to have different policies on birthright citizenship.
Oral arguments at the Supreme Court over the birthright citizenship order will begin at 8 a.m. MDT on Thursday, May 15.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on the issue is expected by early July.
A Deseret News poll conducted in February by HarrisX found that 41% of U.S. voters at least somewhat support Trump’s birthright citizenship order, while 50% oppose it “somewhat” (15%) or “strongly” (35%).
Most Republicans support it, while most Democrats oppose it, the national poll found.