Twenty-Two States Drag Trump To Court Over Birthright Citizenship Order
LAGOS JANUARY 22ND (NEWSRANGERS)-Attorneys general from 22 states sued President Trump in two federal district courts on Tuesday to block an executive order that refuses to recognize the U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants as citizens, the opening salvo in what promises to be a long legal battle over the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Eighteen states and two cities, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., challenged the order in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, arguing that birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment is “automatic” and that neither the president nor Congress has the constitutional authority to revise it. Four other states filed a second lawsuit in the Western District of Washington.
Mr. Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship was “extraordinary and extreme,” said New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, who led one of the legal efforts along with the attorneys general from California and Massachusetts.
“Presidents are powerful,” he said, “but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.”
Nick Brown, the attorney general in Washington, said Mr. Trump’s order would deny citizenship to 150,000 newborn children each year.
“It would render them undocumented at birth. It could even render them citizens to no country at all,” said Mr. Brown, whose state was joined by Oregon, Arizona and Illinois.
On Monday, in the opening hours of his second term as president, Mr. Trump signed an order declaring that future children born to undocumented immigrants would no longer be treated as citizens. The order would extend even to the children of some mothers in the country legally but temporarily, such as foreign students or tourists.
Mr. Trump’s executive order asserts that the children of such noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and thus aren’t covered by the 14th Amendment’s longstanding constitutional guarantee.
The order flew in the face of more than 100 years of legal precedent, when the courts and the executive branch interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing citizenship to every baby born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ legal status. The courts recognize only a few exceptions — such as the children of accredited diplomats, and children born in U.S. territory that is under the control of an occupying army.
“It’s so outlandish that it’s almost assured to be struck down,” predicted Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School, who expressed shock at the order’s breadth. Even former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother was a foreign student when she was born, might be impacted. “The person who drafted this order was not doing Donald Trump any favors.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Mr. Trump’s order would mean that more than 20,000 newborn children would lose their citizenship each year in his state alone. Mr. Trump is “trying to keep a promise that he made during the campaign,” Mr. Bonta said. “We’re trying to keep a promise to uphold the law.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There are signs the judiciary could be divided on the issue. Judge James C. Ho, whom Mr. Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, has been more sympathetic to some of Mr. Trump’s arguments, likening unauthorized immigrants to an invading army. That comparison has also been made by lawyers for the State of Texas and another declaration by Mr. Trump that illegal crossings at the southern border amount to an “ongoing invasion.”
Still, that appeals court does not hear cases originating in Massachusetts, and other courts are unlikely to even consider the Trump administration’s arguments about constitutional interpretation without a new law from Congress, said Gerard Magliocca, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He cited recent cases where the Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch can’t single-handedly address the biggest political controversies, known as “major questions.”
“If that’s true of student loans or Covid-19 rules or whatever, you’d think it would be true of citizenship as well,” he said. “The states are right and the courts are probably going to agree with them.”
The plaintiffs in the suit filed in Massachusetts included New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, Colorado, Delaware, Nevada, Hawaii, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Additional suits were filed by a group led by the American Civil Liberties Union in New Hampshire, and another by Lawyers for Civil Rights.
The order on birthright citizenship does not take effect for 30 days, unlike Mr. Trump’s first-term attempt to ban travel to the United States from several Muslim-majority countries, which led to airport chaos. The timing means that executive-branch agencies can work through how to implement the order while the courts decide on its legality.
Mr. Brown, the Washington state attorney general, said his team continues to review Mr. Trump’s executive orders and expects the state will be involved in more litigation in the future. But, he added, the state is not going to sue over objectionable-but-legal moves by the Trump administration, such as pardoning most of those charged for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I have no interest in continuing to sue the president of the United States, whether it’s Donald Trump or whoever the next president is, but it is my oath to defend the Constitution,” Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship order, he added, was “plainly illegal.”
Tracey Tully and Luis Ferré-Sadurní contributed reporting from New York.
Mike Baker is a national reporter for The Times, based in Seattle. More about Mike Baker
The New York Times
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Posted by News Rangers
on Jan 22 2025. Filed under International, National.
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