Re: Nationwide injunctions and birthright citizenship cases

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

May 15, 2025 at 2:59:11 PM PDT, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

May 15, 2025 at 1:56:27 PM PDT, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

May 15, 2025 at 8:50:43 AM PDT, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

Today, 5/15/2025, three consolidated birthright citizenship cases will
be argued before the Supreme Court. Trump v. CASA, filed by immigrants
rights groups and several pregnant women in Maryland; Trump v.
Washington, filed in Seattle by a group of four states; and Trump v. New
Jersey, filed in Massachusetts by a group of 18 states, the District of
Columbia, and San Francisco.

D. John Sauer is Solicitor General. I recognized the scratchy voice.
He's made these arguments over the years and was clearly hired by Trump
to argue this type of case.

However, Court observers have predicted that most of the time will be
spent analyzing universal injunctions, a practice that has proliferated
over the last several decades.

These need to go. What's the point of having a Congress and a president
when one unelected judge can substitute his judgment for all of theirs
not just in the case before him/her but for every case across the
nation? The judiciary doesn't not set public policy. The political
branches do.

The president, who is not a king but an ordinary civilian to whom
law applies, cannot decree parts of the Constitution inapplicable or
unenforceable. Yes, I know. There are numerous Biden examples -- student
loan debt forgiveness, all-encompassing immigration parole -- but that
doesn't make Trump get to cut clauses out of the Fourteenth Amendment.

 

He's not cutting the clause out, he's saying it's inapplicable to illegal
aliens, and I agree.

Bullshit. Trump says it's inapplicable to CHILDREN of illegal aliens and
travellers. The child born in the United States committed no crime or
violation of any kind of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The commission of crime has nothing to with granting or denying citizenship at
birth.

C'mon. I added "or violation" because illegal presence is a violation of
the act but not necessarily a crime. I'm pointing out that the newborn
simply isn't in violation of the act.

If the mother's status is tourist, she's not even illegally present
while giving birth.

We are considering the act as the child's noncitizenship is due to the
mother's status with regard to the act.

Sauer repeated an argument he's made before, which I don't think is
supported by any sitting Supreme Court justice, that the citizenship
clause was limited to slaves and their children born in the United
States freed by the Thirteenth Amendment.

That's certainly what it was intended for by those who drafted it,
wrote it, and passed it into law.

And that law was immediately found unconstitutional by a Supreme Court

The 14th Amendment was found unconstitutional? Because that's the law I'm
talking about. Part of the Constitution itself is unconstitutional? That's
both news to me and a legal paradox.

You were talking about intent of Congress.

No, I was talking about the intent of the drafters of the 14th Amendment's
birthright citizenship clause.

Those would be Republican members of Congress.

If you seriously argue, like Sauer, that the Fourteenth Amendment was a
grant of liberty to the freed men and no one else

I'm not saying no one else. Just not people who entered the country
illegally.

The unborn baby did nothing illegal.

Neither is the baby legally in the United States. Whether it's born or still
in the womb is irrelevant.

You're can't claim there's any such law as illegal birth. That's
ridiculous.

Just as a child brought here illegally (and involuntarily) by her
parents at the age of two is an illegal alien despite having done nothing
illegal herself.

I don't accept the analogy as there is no assertion of sovereignity over
foreign nationals born outside the United States. Clearly, as the act of
being born took place in the United States, then the United States is
sovereign. One's birth is always associated with geography.

. . .

Every time you bring up that case, I ask you how the newborn baby
himself violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, even if presuming
his mother did?

Intent is not an element of the offense.

I didn't raise intent. I'm pointing out that not yet having been born at
the point of the illegal entry means there was no violation of the law
in question. As it's not illegal to be born, then having been born, the
baby cannot possibly be illegally present in the United States even if
his mother is.

Why not? A 2-year-old child brought into the country illegally by his mother
is illegally present in the United States despite having had no choice (or
even comprehension) in the matter.

Because the United States is sovereign in a birth on US soil and not
sovereign with the birth of a foreign national outside the United
States.

For the purpose of this clause, geography is what determines its
applicability. You cannot deny that US law applies to the fact of a US
birth.

. . .