US judge weighs putting new block on Trump's birthright citizenship order

Highlights:

• Judge heard arguments on blocking birthright citizenship order
• Democratic attorneys general want to keep injunction in place
• Supreme Court decision on nationwide injunctions at issue

A group of Democratic-led states urged a federal judge in Boston on Friday to deal another blow to President Donald Trump's attempts to limit birthright citizenship, even though a US Supreme Court decision last month made it more difficult for lower courts to block White House directives.

Lawyers for New Jersey, arguing on behalf of 18 states and the District of Columbia, urged US District Judge Leo Sorokin to maintain an injunction he imposed in February that blocked Trump's executive order nationwide.

The states' case is back in Sorokin's courtroom so he can assess the impact of the Supreme Court's landmark June 27 decision. In that 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court directed lower court judges like Sorokin that had blocked Trump's policy to reconsider the scope of their orders.

Trump's executive order was already halted again last week by a different judge in New Hampshire, but a win in Sorokin's courtroom would give critics of the Trump policy another boost in litigation that is widely expected to end up back before the Supreme Court.

Shankar Duraiswamy, an attorney for New Jersey, told Sorokin that the Supreme Court decision made clear that nationwide injunctions are permissible if they are the only way to provide "complete relief" to litigants in a particular lawsuit.

A nationwide block on Trump's executive order is the only way to avoid massive administrative upheaval for state governments, Duraiswamy said.

Restricting birthright citizenship in some states but not others would make it difficult to administer federal benefits programs like Medicaid, he argued. This patchwork approach would also lead to confusion among immigrant parents and a surge of people moving to states where Trump's executive order is on hold, straining resources, he said.

"Half-measures are not warranted when enjoining a flagrantly unconstitutional executive action," Duraiswamy said, adding that the Trump administration "wants to rush forward with an unprecedented sea change in how citizenship is understood."

Justice Department lawyer Eric Hamilton countered that, by continuing to advocate for universal relief, the states had failed to come to grips with the Supreme Court's decision.

Hamilton said the burden is on the states to propose a narrower relief but they have failed to do so. He also argued the states were alleging fundamentally monetary harms, which are typically not addressed through injunctions.

Sorokin told him that the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals had already rejected that argument in an earlier decision that left his injunction in place.

"We are not asking this court to do anything contrary to circuit precedent," Hamilton said.

"But it seems like you are," the judge replied.

Sorokin said he planned to issue a written decision in the coming weeks.

Trump's executive order directed US agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States after February 19 if neither their mother nor father is a US citizen or lawful permanent resident.

Rather than address the legality of Trump's executive order, the Supreme Court in its June ruling used the case to discourage nationwide, or "universal," injunctions — in which a single district court judge can block enforcement of a federal policy across the country.

But the court raised the possibility that universal injunctions are still permissible in certain circumstances, including class actions, in which similarly situated people sue as a group, or if they are the only way to provide "complete relief" to litigants in a particular lawsuit.

A ruling from Sorokin, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, in favor of the states would be the second blow to Trump's executive order this month. On July 10 at a hearing in New Hampshire, US District Judge Joseph Laplante, an appointee of Republican president George W. Bush, issued a nationwide injunction blocking Trump's order after he found that children whose citizenship status would be threatened by it could pursue their lawsuit as a class action.

The Democratic-led states, backed by immigrant rights groups, argue the White House directive violated a right enshrined in the US Constitution's 14th Amendment that guarantees that virtually anyone born in the United States is a citizen.

The Justice Department has argued that the Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the interpretation of birthright citizenship advanced by Trump, which they assert is consistent with the Constitution's text.