While the Trump administration is reveling in today’s SCOTUS birthright citizenship ruling, Local News Pasadena reached out to several community leaders for their comments. LNP has previously reported on this issue. The remarks are varied, yet pointed.
Judy Chu (US House of Representatives, CA-28)
“The Supreme Court’s decision paves the way for even more authoritarianism from this administration. It greenlights Trump’s attacks on our constitutional rights by limiting the nationwide injunctions that so many courts successfully sued for to block his plainly unconstitutional executive order to end birthright citizenship. Today’s ruling importantly gives lower courts time to respond, and we will keep fighting. Because if Donald Trump succeeds, the victims of his cruel agenda will be babies who will be made stateless, not the “criminals” he lies about going after. Unfortunately, and in the words of Justice Sotomayor, this decision represents the Court’s increasingly reckless pattern of bowing to the President and making a “solemn mockery” of our most precious constitutional rights. We will not stand for it.”
Rick Cole (Pasadena City Council, District 2)
"Elections matter. The ruthless blocking of President Obama's last Supreme Court nomination and the subsequent muscling through of three Trump justices is evident in today's ruling. The current Administration is determined to impose its will by any means necessary and the law is the last guardrail around our democracy. With a Supreme Court majority willing to say the law is what the President says it is, we are seeing the agonizing end of the rule of law."
Steve Madison (Pasadena City Council, District 6)
I am gravely concerned about the Supreme Court’s ruling limiting the judicial branch’s power to enjoin clearcut violations of the United States Constitution by the federal government. Forcing aggrieved litigants from around the country — many of whom are working people with limited time and resources — to engage counsel and navigate scores of different federal courts, creates a significant barrier to enforcing the Constitution, and may well result in an absurd predicament in which children born in some states have different rights from other children in other states.
It’s difficult to imagine a more clear cut violation of the Constitution, or a more inequitable contest than one pitting newborn children and their parents, against the federal government, than Trump’s rejection of birthright citizenship. During these difficult times, and given the repugnant conduct of the Trump administration, we need our federal courts to enforce the rule of law as robustly as possible. Regrettably the majority’s decision is a step backward, not forward.
Michael Overing (Overing-Morales Attorneys, Pasadena)
The Supreme Court kicked the can down the road on birthright citizenship. How this will play out is unclear. The dissent made it clear that the issue is significant and needs attention. Maybe we will see more appeals, soon.
Regarding the nationwide injunctions, the majority (usual suspects) have found that the process of issuing them is flawed because it takes account of persons not before the court — something that courts traditionally are not allowed to do. The courts, the majority reasons, does justice for the persons before it; not others. And, when it goes beyond, it goes beyond the judicial power.
While a win for any president who doesn’t like nationwide injunctions (Trump for sure), this is really a lesson in federalism. How the courts and the president will continue to get along in the third millennium. Overshadowing the ruling And the real battleground is the scathing rebuke of Justice Jackson’s dissent by Justice Barrett.
Justice Barrett writes, “Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary.”
Clearly the gloves have come off. And equally clearly the vision of what the judiciary means in our constitutional framework is going to be a battleground for the future. If there were any doubt, Justice Barrett’s warning to Justice Jackson “everyone from the president on down, is bound by law…that goes for judges too” may be a defining moment in the judicial history of the United States.
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