Almost as soon as the Supreme Court released its ruling limiting the ability of judges to block President Donald Trump's plan to end birthright citizenship, challengers brought new legal claims seeking the same result by a different means.
While the Supreme Court said judges cannot issue sweeping "universal injunctions" that can apply nationwide in many cases, it left open the option of plaintiffs seeking broad relief via class action lawsuits.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed such a lawsuit in New Hampshire on behalf of immigrants whose children may not obtain U.S. citizenship at birth if Trump's order was to go into effect.
In a separate case in Maryland, in which groups had previously obtained a nationwide injunction, lawyers filed an amended complaint seeking similar class-wide relief for anyone affected by Trump's plan within hours of the ruling authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Under Trump's plan, birthright citizenship would be limited to those who have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. That is at odds with the widely accepted understanding of the Constitution's 14th Amendment — that it grants citizenship to anyone born in the U.S., with a few minor exceptions.
Samuel Bray, a critic of nationwide injunctions at Notre Dame Law School whose work was cited in the ruling, said both the states and individual plaintiffs can still get broad injunctions against the birthright citizenship executive order, potentially even on a nationwide basis.
"I don't expect the executive order will ever go into effect," he added.
