Less than a month after the Supreme Court told federal judges to restrain themselves from issuing nationwide injunctions, a federal appeals court ruled that those injunctions can be legal if states are the plaintiffs.
In a decision late Wednesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a universal injunction against President Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship.
Judge Ronald M. Gould, writing the key opinion, said states, which were the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, need certainty in their policies. Allowing a patchwork of rules, in which babies born to illegal immigrants would be recognized as citizens in some places but not others, would be difficult for the states to address.
“It is impossible to avoid this harm absent a uniform application of the Citizenship Clause throughout the United States,” he wrote.
The ruling marks the second time this month that a court has stepped in to issue a nationwide block on Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship plans, after the Supreme Court seemingly gave the president more room to proceed with his agenda.
The Trump administration thought it had won a major legal victory after facing a record number of injunctions from courts over the past six months.
The Supreme Court said in a 6-3 decision in June that universal injunctions issued by lower courts had gone too far, though it did not rule on the legality of Mr. Trump’s specific birthright citizenship plan.
“These injunctions — known as ‘universal injunctions’ — likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said in the key opinion.
However, the justices hinted at two escape clauses that could lead to the same outcome of a nationwide blockade. One involved cases in which states were plaintiffs, and the other was when a class-action complaint was certified.
This month, courts have leapt at both options to reimpose nationwide injunctions on Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. A federal judge in New Hampshire certified a class action for all children born to illegal immigrants and temporary foreign visitors, and the 9th Circuit flexed the state option.
“This is not surprising, and this is why I think the court will have one of these cases or more back up on these procedural grounds, sooner rather than later, before even getting to the substance of birthright citizenship,” said Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute.
In the 9th Circuit ruling, the majority got to the substance of Mr. Trump’s birthright policy by finding that the president’s plan violated the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to “all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Judge Gould said children of illegal immigrants and temporary visitors are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. and therefore are covered.
Trump attorneys had argued that illegal immigrants and temporary visitors don’t owe “allegiance” to the U.S. and therefore are not under its jurisdiction.
The 9th Circuit said an 1898 Supreme Court ruling that looked at births to immigrants didn’t read any allegiance test into the 14th Amendment.
“The defendants’ proposed interpretation of the Citizenship Clause relies on a network of inferences that are unmoored from the accepted legal principles of 1868 [when the 14th Amendment was ratified],” wrote Judge Gould, a Clinton appointee.
Circuit Court Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Trump appointee, largely dissented from the ruling. He said the states didn’t prove any concrete legal injury and shouldn’t have had standing to bring the lawsuit.
He said the states’ claims that they would have to alter policies and perhaps have more people living within their borders weren’t proof enough to sue.
“Taken to its logical endpoint, the states’ theory would grant them standing to contest virtually any federal action that might tangentially affect who lives or is born within their borders,” he concluded.
That was what Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said he feared in his opinion last month.
He urged courts to be strict in granting states the right to sue on behalf of their constituents, and he warned courts not to immediately turn to class-action lawsuits as a workaround to the justices’ admonitions.
“Lax enforcement of the requirements for third-party standing and class certification would create a potentially significant loophole to today’s decision,” he wrote. “Federal courts should thus be vigilant against such potential abuses of these tools.”
