The Daily Fuckup

The Trump administration did not ask the Supreme Court to rehear its birthright-citizenship case by the July 28 deadline, leaving the court’s June 30 judgment in place. The missed filing means the administration will not get an immediate second look from the justices at the ruling that rejected its attempt to deny automatic citizenship to some children born in the United States.

The June decision was not just about the merits of the citizenship order. In Trump v. Barbara, the court also addressed the scope of relief in the case, limiting the reach of universal injunctions even as it ruled against the administration’s birthright-citizenship theory. That makes the result more complicated than a simple all-or-nothing loss, but the practical effect for the order itself is straightforward: the administration did not preserve a rehearing bid before the deadline expired.

A petition for rehearing is a narrow and difficult step, and the court rarely grants one. Still, missing the deadline closes off the most direct way to press the justices to revisit the ruling on the existing record. For now, the June judgment stands, and the administration will have to look elsewhere if it wants to keep challenging the outcome.

The case sits at the center of a larger argument over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and the limits of presidential power. The administration had argued for a narrower reading of birthright citizenship that would have cut off automatic citizenship for children born to parents who were in the country unlawfully or temporarily. The Supreme Court rejected that theory in its June 30 opinion, even as it separately narrowed the use of universal injunctions in federal court.