00:00On January 20th, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14160, protecting the meaning
00:07and value of American citizenship. This order reflects the original meaning of the 14th
00:13Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens
00:18or temporary visitors. Multiple district courts promptly issued nationwide or universal injunctions
00:26blocking this order, and a cascade of such universal injunctions followed. Since January
00:3120th, district courts have now issued 40 universal injunctions against the federal government,
00:37including 35 from the same five judicial districts. This is a bipartisan problem that has now spanned
00:44the last five presidential administrations. Universal injunctions exceed the judicial power
00:50granted in Article 3, which exists only to address the injury to the complaining party.
00:54They transgress the traditional balance of equitable authority, and they create a host
01:00of practical problems.
01:01I mean, that's a lot of words, and I don't have an answer for if one thinks. And, you know,
01:07look, there are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions. But I think that the question that
01:12this case presents is that if one thinks that it's quite clear that the EO is illegal, how
01:19does one get to that result in what time frame on your set of rules without the possibility of a
01:26nationwide injunction?
01:27On this case, and on many similar cases, the appropriate way to do it is for there to be
01:32multiple lower courts considering it, the appropriate percolation that closed to the
01:36lower courts, and then ultimately, this court decides the merits in a nationwide binding
01:41precedent. You have a complete inversion of that through the nationwide injunctions with the
01:45district courts.
01:45So, General Sauer, are you really going to answer Justice Kagan by saying there's no way to do this
01:49expeditiously?
01:50Well, I'll refer to my former answers. Rule 23 provides the tools to do so, multiple injunctions.
01:55But you resisted Justice Kagan when she said, could the individual plaintiffs form a class?
02:01We, uh, that has never been briefed in the court below. I do not concede that we wouldn't oppose
02:06class certification in this particular case. There may be arguments that this case is or is not
02:10appropriate for class certification.
02:11This court should deny the emergency application because this injunction was properly designed to
02:16ensure that the states would get relief for our own Article III injuries, as we suffer significant
02:22pocketbook and sovereign harms from implementation of this executive order, including from the
02:27application of the CO to the 6,000 babies born to New Jersey parents out of state every year.
02:33The U.S. prefers alternative approaches for granting that relief, alternatives it never raised in the
02:38district court below. But its approach would require citizenship to vary based on the state in which
02:44you're born, or even turn on or off when someone crosses state lines, raising serious and unanswered
02:50administrability questions, not just for the federal government, but also for the states. And it would
02:56offend the text and history of the citizenship clause itself. Since the 14th Amendment, our country has never
03:03allowed American citizenship to vary based on the state in which someone resides.
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