WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to conclude its nine-month term on Friday with a flurry of rulings including a closely watched case concerning President Donald Trump’s attempt to end automatic birthright citizenship.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has six cases left to decide of those in which it heard oral arguments in the current term, which began in October.
Other cases are on such issues as voting rights, religious rights and health care.
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The one that has attracted most attention is the birthright citizenship dispute, which focuses not on the lawfulness of the proposal but whether federal judges had the power to block it nationwide while litigation continues.
What the court says about so-called nationwide injunctions could have wide-ranging impacts, with judges frequently ruling against Trump on his broad use of executive power. The court also has the option of side-stepping a decision on that issue and instead taking up the merits of the plan.
Birthright citizenship is conferred under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
The longstanding interpretation of the provision as understood by generations of Americans, including legal scholars on the left and right, is that anyone born on U.S. soil is an American citizen with a few minor exceptions, including people who are the children of diplomats.
Along with birthright citizenship, the other five cases the court has to decide concern:
- Whether conservative religious parents can opt their elementary school-age children out of LGBTQ-themed books in class.
- Long-running litigation over whether congressional districts in Louisiana are lawful.
- A law enacted in Texas that imposes age-restrictions for using adult websites.
- A challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s preventive care task force.
- A Federal Communications Commission program that subsidizes phone and internet services in underserved areas.
The justices typically break for the summer and return for a new term in October, although they will still likely have to continue acting on cases that reach them on an emergency basis. Such cases have been reaching the court with increasing frequency since Trump took office.
