Lawyers for President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift a nationwide pause imposed on the president’s order ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.
The move represents the first time the legal wrangling over the president’s order to end birthright citizenship has reached the Supreme Court. If the Trump administration succeeds, the policy could go into effect in some parts of the country.
Three federal courts, in Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington State, had issued directives temporarily pausing the order, which was signed by Mr. Trump on his first day in office and declared that the government would no longer consider the U.S.-born children of undocumented people as citizens.
The Trump administration’s emergency applications are aimed at pushing back on nationwide injunctions, judicial orders that can block a policy or action from being enforced throughout the entire country, rather than just on those parties involved in the litigation. The tool has been used by both Democratic and Republican administrations, and a debate over such injunctions has simmered for years.
In her applications to the court, Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general, called the government’s request a “modest” one to limit the pause to “parties actually within the courts’ power.”
“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” Ms. Harris wrote.