Birthright citizenship is 'protected' in Colorado despite Supreme Court ruling, AG says

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented, described the ruling as a "grave attack on our system of law."

"No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” she wrote. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship."

Rep. Joe Neguse, a Colorado Democrat, called the ruling "misguided and reckless” in a statement.

Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican, signaled his support for the ruling, but his office didn’t touch on the question of citizenship. Asked for comment, a spokesperson pointed out that Evans supported an attempt in Congress to limit the authority of district court judges to issue universal injunctions.

Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement that the court was opening the door for the erosion of constitutional rights.

“This is a sad day. President Trump’s unlawful executive order and this decision weakens our ability to preserve well-established constitutional rights, creating a patchwork where rights might be upheld in some states and rolled back in others,” he said in a statement.

In the past, plaintiffs have used universal injunctions to stop policies from leaders of both major political parties. 

Some legal scholars have said that universal injunctions are bad for the judiciary — encouraging plaintiffs “to hand pick a single district-court judge who can then set policy for the nation,” as SCOTUSblog reported.  Plaintiffs often use courts in conservative states to block liberal policies, and vice versa, wrote Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

Other scholars have argued that universal injunctions are important. They are arguably “essential to avoid injury to the thousands of people affected by government action who cannot quickly file suit themselves, or who could not easily be included in a class,” Frost wrote.

Weiser said he would continue to fight Trump’s citizenship order, which challenges the country’s historic approach to who gets to be an American.

“Within the next month, we'll be back in the district court,” Weiser said. 

The Supreme Court may ultimately take on the question of whether Trump actually had the right to revoke birthright citizenship.

“If I had to bet, I would say it's more likely than not that for one reason or another the Supreme Court takes this issue on,” Weiser said.” I very much believe on the merits that we have a winning case based on the text of the 14th Amendment, based on longstanding precedents. We aren't going to take anything granted. We'll be fighting hard.”

Trump’s executive order on Jan. 20 said that children born after Feb. 19 would be denied citizenship unless one of their parents had permanent legal status in the country. Multiple lawsuits were immediately filed to challenge his reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. The high court’s ultimate decision on his order could affect hundreds of thousands of children born each year in the U.S.

The 14th Amendment, enacted in 1868, declared: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The question of birthright citizenship had long been considered settled by the courts, with the last major ruling coming in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. In that case, the court ruled 6-2 that a child born in the U.S. to Chinese nationals was a citizen under the 14th Amendment. The decision reinforced the principle of jus soli, or the “right of the soil,” granting citizenship based on birthplace.

Anti-immigration advocates have long argued that granting birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and “birth tourism.”