Washington | Smita Ghosh, an Indian-American lawyer’s brief to the Supreme Court as an amicus curiae, is shaping up the arguments in the case challenging US President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for certain people.

Ghosh, a senior appellate counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Centre, is part of a group of attorneys contesting before the US Supreme Court Trump’s executive order, signed on the first day in office after re-election as President in January.

The executive order seeks to end the birthright citizenship granted by the 14th Amendment.

Before joining Constitutional Accountability Centre (CAC), Ghosh was a Research Fellow at Georgetown University Law Centre, where she taught classes on immigration law and separation of powers.

She has also served as a Supreme Court Fellow at the US Sentencing Commission and a law clerk for Judge Victor Bolden in the US District Court for the District of Connecticut.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Ghosh completed her undergraduate education in history at Swarthmore College, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, graduating with high honours.

She then pursued a Juris Doctor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she graduated cum laude.

In addition to her legal training, Ghosh earned a PhD in legal history from the University of Pennsylvania. During her academic career, she was recognised as an Annenberg History Fellow and later as a Benjamin Franklin Fellow, highlighting her scholarly achievements.

Her professional background also includes roles in private practice and civil rights advocacy. She worked as a legal advisor at Berke-Weiss Law and contributed to pro bono and constitutional cases during her time at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.

Additionally, she served as a research associate at the NAACP Legal Defence and Educational Fund, where she worked on issues related to civil rights and equality.

In the brief for the Supreme Court, co-authored by Ghosh, the lawyers argue that Trump’s executive order undermines long-standing constitutional protections.

Ghosh's legal argument draws heavily on constitutional history and refers to pre-14th Amendment rulings, including an 1844 New York case, to argue that birthright citizenship was an established legal principle even before it was codified.

“In the 1844 case, Judge Lewis Sandford [of the New York Court of Chancery] held that Julia Lynch, the child of Irish parents who was born during their ‘temporary sojourn’ in New York, was a US citizen,” Ghosh wrote in Slate's Executive Dysfunction newsletter.

Ghosh argues that the case “sheds light on the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause because it represents the state of the law before the amendment was ratified, and the clause, according to its Framers, was ratified to confirm—not change—this aspect of existing law.”

“In brief, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship to all children born in the United States, no matter the immigration status of their parents. No amount of contortion on Applicants’ part can change this. This Court should deny the applications,” the amicus curiae said in the document submitted to the court against the Trump administration.