A professor in the University Writing program filed an amicus brief last month with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of eight GW students, opposing an executive order that seeks to ban birthright citizenship.

The brief, filed on April 2, urges the Supreme Court not to issue a stay or pause in a legal action in the current injunction in a lawsuit involving President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting birthright citizenship. Zachary Wolfe, an assistant professor of writing who teaches a class about law, filed the brief after he was approached by Arik Karim, a first-year student who said he may be affected by the executive order as a first-generation citizen.

“I’m really impressed with the academic work that the students have been doing and with their willingness and courage to come forward,” Wolfe said. “This is a time when people are very afraid of being targeted by the administration.”

Trump signed the executive order on first day in office, which attempts to ban birthright citizenship in the United States. Birthright citizenship is widely accepted as guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, according to legal scholars. One day after it was signed, 22 states joined a lawsuit initially filed by 18 Democratic attorneys general to block the order.

Wolfe said the Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to stop the injunctions — or a restraint on a person from continuing an action — against his executive order banning birthright citizenship, so that the administration can begin to enforce the executive order.

Two days after the lawsuit was filed, a federal judge in Washington blocked the order, issuing an injunction nationwide. Federal judges in Maryland, New Hampshire and Massachusetts would issue similar injunctions in the coming weeks.

The Trump administration appealed the decision to federal appellate courts, but the appeal was not granted by all three appeals judges. The Supreme Court will now hear the case, focused on whether the injunctions issued by the federal judges can be nationwide or just applicable to the individual plaintiffs the original lawsuits were filed on behalf of on May 15.

Amicus briefs are additional filings in court cases that seek to provide additional information to courts concerning a specific case. Up until the mid-20th century, amicus briefs were rare in American court cases but are now filed in almost every case. 

Wolfe said he was approached by Karim, a student involved in the Student Political Research Initiative for New Governance organization, in his University Writing class shortly after Trump initially signed the executive order, expressing interest in filing an amicus brief because Karim was concerned the order could impact him as a first-generation student. Wolfe said he waited to file a brief until initial court battles over the order were over since everything was moving quickly in the lower courts.

“So when they initially approached me, I said, ‘Let’s see what happens in the appellate courts and see where it makes sense for the amicus brief to be contributed,’” Wolfe said.

Wolfe said once he knew the Trump administration wanted to take the case to the Supreme Court, he looked to other student organizations that could have members that would be affected by the order to see if they wanted to join in on the brief. He said he reached out to the Justice Journal, the GW Pre-Law Students Association’s official blog because of the organization’s knowledge of legal issues in the news.

Wolfe said while the Justice Journal could not join as an organization itself the same way SPRING did — since it is directly affiliated with GW — students involved in the publication joined as individuals.

“They came up with the idea of, ‘Can we as individuals express our interest in the case?’” Wolfe said.

Wolfe said two students, Adam Mancini and Ben Wieser, the managing editor and managing director of Justice Journal, respectively, joined the brief as individuals. He said he had other students from Justice Journal and the Undergraduate Law Review, which is also affiliated with the PLSA, write individual statements of interest for the brief, which explain why the brief is being filed and its necessity in court proceedings.

“And so they drafted each of those and sort of bounce ideas off of each other,” Wolfe said. “They really, I thought they wrote beautiful statements of interest.” 

Karim, a first-year student studying international affairs, said he was first introduced to Wolfe as a student in his University Writing class, which is focused on laws as a force for social change. He said the idea for writing an amicus brief came together after he discovered Wolfe had written amicus briefs in the past.

Karim said he wanted Wolfe to write the brief because he is a first-generation student and was “particularly concerned” by the Trump administration’s executive order targeting birthright citizenship because he is a first-generation American and writes political content.

Karim said he is a founding member of SPRING, an organization that works primarily with high school students to write policy briefs for both domestic and international governments. He said many of the organization’s members are first-generation students.

“I was particularly concerned with the administration’s action, especially against college students and free speech as it relates to Israel-Palestine, and I had feared that there would be a spillover effect into other kinds of free speech, especially the kind of work that that I write and other students may write that may be critical of this administration,” Karim said.

Karim said he’s hopeful the brief will be considered as a part of the arguments when the Supreme Court hears the case.

“It gives me a lot of hope that our perspective will be included, and that our advocacy might actually result in the overturning of this executive order,” Karim said. 

Mancini, a senior majoring in political science, said he and Wieser both thought it “wouldn’t be prudent” to join the amici brief as an organization, especially given its connection to the University. 

Mancini said he decided to join the brief as an individual because he thought of his relatives, who were immigrants to the United States. Mancini said he wondered what it would be like in the shoes of his immigrant grandfather and first-generation college student mother. 

“So I kind of saw myself as, you know, doing justice for where my family has come from and being able to sympathize with the students that are directly affected by the order today,” Mancini said.