At today's Supreme Court Oral Arguments in a case on birthright citizenship, Solicitor General D. John Sauer made his case in defense of President Trump's executive order declaring that the children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants shouldn't get citizenship.
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00:00We will hear argument this morning in case 24A884, Trump v. Cassa, Inc., and the consolidated
00:11cases.
00:12General Sauer.
00:13Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court.
00:17On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14160, protecting the meaning
00:24and value of American citizenship.
00:27This order reflects the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship
00:32to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens or temporary visitors.
00:39Multiple district courts promptly issued nationwide or universal injunctions blocking this order,
00:44and a cascade of such universal injunctions followed.
00:48Since January 20, district courts have now issued 40 universal injunctions against the
00:52federal government, including 35 from the same five judicial districts.
00:58This is a bipartisan problem that has now spanned the last five presidential administrations.
01:04Universal injunctions exceed the judicial power granted in Article III, which exists only to
01:09address the injury to the complaining party.
01:12They transgress the traditional bounds of equitable authority, and they create a host of practical
01:17problems.
01:19Such injunctions prevent the percolation of novel and difficult legal questions.
01:23They encourage rampant forum shopping.
01:26They require judges to make rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions.
01:31They circumvent Rule 23 by offering all the benefits but none of the burdens of class certification.
01:37They operate asymmetrically, forcing the government to win everywhere while the plaintiffs can win
01:42anywhere.
01:43They invert the ordinary hierarchy of appellate review.
01:48They create the ongoing risk of conflicting judgments.
01:52They increase the pressures on this court's emergency docket.
01:56They create what Justice Powell described as repeated and essentially head-on confrontations
02:01between the life-tenured and representative branches of government.
02:05Can they disrupt the Constitution's careful balancing of the separation of powers?
02:10I welcome the court's questions.