Norman Wong's great-grandfather helped enshrine birthright citizenship. He says the struggle continues

Norman Wong is in a fight for his family's legacy.

More than a century ago, his great-grandfather Wong Kim Ark -- a U.S. citizen born in San Francisco -- was refused entry into the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act. He sued, and the Supreme Court's decision in his case became the landmark ruling that enshrined birthright citizenship.

Wong, a 75-year-old retired carpenter, says he now fears he is witnessing the dismantling of his family's legacy, as President Donald Trump attempts to use an executive order to eliminate birthright citizenship for the children of some noncitizens. The Supreme Court is set to take up the issue on Thursday when justices hear arguments about whether to restrict a series of court rulings that blocked Trump's executive order eliminating birthright citizenship.

"On one hand, I feel more proud than ever of being descended from Wong Kim Ark," Wong told ABC News. "But I also feel that it's a struggle that all of us need to participate in, because this is for the soul of our country."

The Supreme Court's decision in the case could have sweeping implications, whether the justices decide to only approach the issue of the legality of nationwide injunctions or wade into the underlying legal arguments over birthright citizenship itself.

'Rewrite the Constitution'

On his first day in office, Trump signed his executive order, entitled "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship," to limit birthright citizenship to the children of U.S. citizens and legal residents. It was challenged immediately, and judges in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland, and Washington state blocked it from taking effect.

"I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as it is here," U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said, blocking the executive order just three days into the Trump presidency. "This is a blatantly unconstitutional order."

Trump has argued that only newborns with permanent legal status are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States and eligible for birthright citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment 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."

As Trump issued an unprecedented stream of 140 executive orders during his first few months in office, his administration faced an onslaught of more than 220 legal challenges in federal courthouses across the country. Forced to defend the unilateral actions in court, the Trump administration was dealt with loss after loss, blunting the implementation of parts of his agenda during his first hundred days in office.

"We've seen many Trump proposals, initiatives and orders subject to nationwide injunctions, but that's because he is issuing an unprecedented number of executive orders that seek to rewrite the Constitution and the law," explained University of Virginia school of law professor Amanda Frost.

Trump and his allies have railed against what they call a "judicial coup" and argued that federal judges have overreached by issuing nationwide orders.

'Epidemic proportions'

In March, the Trump administration used its appeal of multiple court orders blocking Trump's birthright citizenship executive order as a vehicle to challenge the use of nationwide injunctions, asking the Supreme Court to stay the lower courts' orders and curtail the issuance of nationwide orders.

"Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current Administration," former acting solicitor general Sarah Harris argued. "This Court should declare that enough is enough before district courts' burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched."

Rather than asking the Supreme Court to examine the lawfulness of Trump's executive order, the Trump administration asked the justices to consider the scope of the injunctions blocking the executive order from being implemented. They argue the order, rather than applying to anyone in the United States, should be limited to a specific federal district or only to the named plaintiffs in a lawsuit.

While the Trump administration has been subject to an unprecedented number of injunctions -- more in one month than during three years of the Biden administration, according to administration officials -- Harris argued that the issue has plagued presidents from both parties.

"I think the Supreme Court sees that this has just gotten totally out of hand," said a senior DOJ official who described the issue as a "bipartisan problem."

Lawyers representing the plaintiffs who challenged the executive order have pushed back on the request to limit the argument to the scope of national injunctions, saying the implications of the requested relief would cause "chaos" for the thousands at risk of being born noncitizens under Trump's order.

"If the Court were to grant the government's motion, chaos would ensue," they argued, adding that the nature of the issue requires a nationwide order to preserve the "uniformity of United States citizenship."

Moreover, they argued that limiting the power of federal judges is inconsistent with the Constitution and curtails the federal judiciary's ability to balance the executive branch.

"The government is wrong that relief benefiting nonparties violates Article III and principles of equity. If that were true, the courts could not have granted remedies for school segregation or racial gerrymandering. Nor could courts issue facial relief in response to a facially unconstitutional law," they argued.

'Hope for the best'

It's unclear if any of the justices will wade into the legal question of birthright citizenship or whether they will stick to the constitutionality of nationwide injunctions, according to Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt.

"The big question probably isn't a question that the Supreme Court's going to answer on Thursday," he said. "The narrower question for the court on Thursday is, if one judge decides that the government's doing something wrong, can it order the government to stop for everybody?"

But for Norman Wong, who has watched from afar as the Trump administration has tried to chip away at the right his great-grandfather helped enshrine, the case's ascent to the Supreme Court is a troubling sign of how the courts may not balance potential overreaches by Trump.

"If we lose this battle, it's going to get worse," he said in an interview a week ahead of the Supreme Court's argument.

Wong's family has existed at a crossroads of American history. His great-grandfather, who spent his life working as a cook in San Francisco's Chinatown, battled the federal government as it tried to restrict his re-entry into the country at a time of soaring anti-Chinese sentiment. He spent five months detained on a boat off the coast of California as his case moved through the Supreme Court. Forty years later -- as the United States began to detain Japanese-Americans during World War II -- Wong's mother was sent to an internment camp.

Now, the Trump administration has revived the legal arguments at the center of the Wong Kim Ark case, according to Frost, revisiting a legal push some historians have viewed as a dark moment in American history. Trump attempted to invoke the Alien Enemies Act -- a wartime authority used to deport noncitizens with little-to-no due process during wartime -- to remove alleged migrant gang members, and the government is reusing the arguments made by the former solicitor general who fought to remove Wong Kim Ark.

"They're really just reviving the arguments made by Holmes Conrad, the slave-owning Virginian who fought for the Confederacy, and then after losing the Civil War, tried to win it in court," said Frost. "Many of the arguments Conrad makes about how a son of child of Chinese immigrants could not have allegiance to the United States, could not be loyal, had allegiance to the Emperor of China -- all these arguments look a lot like the kind of arguments I see in the briefs filed by the Department of Justice today under President Trump."

For Wong, the case represents an ugly instance of history rearing its head, threatening not only the right enshrined in the Constitution and federal law but also his family legacy.

"I want to hope for the best for my children and grandchildren," he said. "I have to believe that this stuff will come to pass, and we'll right this ship called the United States of America -- but it's going to take all of us to get on the right path."