The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow restrictions on birthright citizenship to partly take effect while legal fights play out.
In emergency applications filed at the high court on Thursday, the administration asked the justices to narrow court orders entered by district judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington that blocked the order President Donald Trump signed shortly after beginning his second term.
The order is currently blocked nationwide. Three federal appeals courts have rejected the administration's pleas, including one in Massachusetts on Tuesday
The order would deny citizenship to those born after February 19 whose parents are in the country illegally. It also forbids US agencies from issuing any document or accepting any state document recognising citizenship for such children.
Roughly two dozen states, as well as several individuals and groups, have sued over the executive order, which they say violates the Constitution's 14th Amendment promise of citizenship to anyone born inside the United States.
The Justice Department argues that individual judges lack the power to give nationwide effect to their rulings.
The administration instead wants the justices to allow Trump's plan to go into effect for everyone except the handful of people and groups that sued, arguing that the states lack the legal right, or standing, to challenge the executive order.
As a fallback, the administration asked "at a minimum" to be allowed to make public announcements about how they plan to carry out the policy if it eventually is allowed to take effect.
No universal extension
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris contends in her filing that Trump's order is constitutional because the 14th amendment's citizenship clause, properly read, "does not extend citizenship universally to everyone born in the United States."
But the emergency appeal is not directly focused on the validity of the order. Instead, it raises an issue that has previously drawn criticism from some members of the court, the broad reach of orders issued by individual federal judges.
In all, 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 administration made a similar argument in Trump's first term, including in the Supreme Court fight over his ban on travel to the US from several Muslim majority countries.
The court eventually upheld Trump's policy, but did not take up the issue of nationwide injunctions.
The problem has only gotten worse, Harris told the court on Thursday. Courts issued 15 orders blocking administration actions nationwide in February alone, compared to 14 such orders in the first three years of President Joe Biden's term, she wrote.
Birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the US Constitution since 1868 when the 14th Amendment was adopted. It stipulates that "all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
