C-SPAN is urging the Supreme Court to allow live video coverage of oral arguments regarding President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship.
On May 7, the public-affairs cable television network made public a letter that its CEO, Sam Feist, sent to Chief Justice John Roberts requesting that its cameras be allowed inside the courtroom on May 15 for the oral arguments in Trump v. CASA Inc.
In April, the Supreme Court left in place lower court orders blocking Trump’s policy of limiting birthright citizenship for certain individuals and scheduled the oral arguments.
“This case holds profound national significance,” Feist wrote in the April 23 letter.
“Its implications—legal, political, and personal—will affect millions of Americans. In light of this, we believe the public interest is best served through live television coverage of the proceedings. The public deserves to witness—fully and directly—how such a consequential issue is argued before the highest court in the land.”
Permitting live video coverage of the case would offer “Americans outside the few seated inside the Court, the ability to also see how critical issues are debated and decided at the highest level,” he wrote.
“[C-SPAN stands] ready to work with the Court to ensure that this broadcast is conducted with the dignity and respect befitting the occasion,” Feist wrote.
The Supreme Court currently provides a live audio feed of oral arguments on its website and is expected to do so on May 15. Members of the public may apply for tickets to attend oral arguments in person. Applicants enter a lottery for available seats, and the results are announced three weeks beforehand. No recording devices, including cameras, are allowed in the courtroom. Transcripts of arguments are typically posted on the court’s website hours after the argument is completed.
Trump’s Executive Order 14160, signed on Jan. 20, states that “the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”
In filings for the appeal, the Department of Justice did not ask the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the executive order itself, although it acknowledged that the birthright citizenship question raises “important constitutional questions with major ramifications for securing the border.”
Instead, the department made what it called a “modest” request.
“While the parties litigate weighty questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purport to cover every person … in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power,” it wrote.
According to Trump’s executive order, an individual born in the United States is not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” if that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the country and the individual’s father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the person’s birth.
The order also states that the privilege of U.S. citizenship does not apply to an individual whose mother’s presence was lawful but temporary and whose father was neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at the time of that individual’s birth.
The executive order prompted debate over the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Critics of Trump’s order have cited the Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the court held that the 14th Amendment granted birthright citizenship to a Chinese man whose parents were legally present in the United States.
In CASA Inc. v. Trump, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland wrote that the president’s interpretation of the Constitution’s citizenship clause “contradicts the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment and conflicts with 125-year-old binding Supreme Court precedent.”
Boardman wrote that she was issuing a nationwide injunction against the executive order because “only a nationwide injunction will provide complete relief to the plaintiffs” in the case.
Nationwide injunctions, also known as nonparty or universal injunctions, set policy for the entire country.
Such injunctions have become controversial in recent years as they have become increasingly common. Since Trump began his second term, multiple federal district judges have issued injunctions blocking his policies, leading to calls from congressional Republicans to impeach district judges and restrict their injunction-granting powers.
On April 9, the House passed a bill by a vote of 219–213 in an attempt to curb the barrage of district court rulings that have blocked or delayed Trump’s agenda on multiple fronts.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Supreme Court’s public information office for comment on the letter. No reply was received by publication time.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared May 8, 2025, in The Epoch Times.