WASHINGTON — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to move forward with an executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, after a series of lower court rulings blocked the policy nationwide.

The Justice Department, in three applications about rulings in Washington, New Jersey and Maryland, asked the justices to limit those rulings only to the people or states who filed them.

And the Justice Department also asked the justices to allow federal agencies to develop and issue guidance explaining how they would implement Trump’s citizenship order “in the event that it takes effect.”

Trump signed the executive order on the first day of his second term after making a campaign promise on the issue. The order purports to define birthright citizenship to exclude children born to people in the United States without legal status or those on temporary visas.

The order has remained on hold since January, when a federal judge in Washington issued the first order barring its enforcement. Since then, multiple district courts have ruled against the order, finding it likely violated the Constitution, federal immigration law and federal administrative law. Multiple appellate courts rebuffed the Trump administration’s appeal of those orders.

In court filings, states and others have said the order could strip citizenship from hundreds of thousands of children each year.

The Trump administration argued that the lower court judges overstepped their bounds. The government said in court filings that a provision in the 14th Amendment requires people to be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States to receive birthright citizenship, and that Trump has the power to exclude the children of noncitizens without the need for Congress.

“That policy of near-universal birthright citizenship has created strong incentives for illegal immigration. It has led to ‘birth tourism,’ the practice by which expecting mothers travel to the United States to give birth and secure U.S. citizenship for their children,” an administration filing Thursday said.

The DOJ devoted much of the filings to criticizing the rulings by lower courts in recent weeks restricting the administration through nationwide injunctions. The Justice Department filings argued that rulings by single judges that apply nationwide “thwart the rule of law.”

“Since the start of this Administration, district courts have repeatedly issued orders that superintend the internal operations of the Executive Branch by prohibiting the formulation of new policies,” the filing said.

The filing comes after Republicans for years backed efforts to obtain nationwide injunctions against Biden administration policies, including one Trump himself praised. The Trump administration cited some of those same lawsuits Thursday, arguing that states and advocacy groups have abused national injunctions to block policies they do not like.

“Government-by-universal-injunction has persisted long enough, and has reached a fever pitch in recent weeks,” the filing said.

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