Attorneys general from 22 states and two cities sued President Donald Trump in two district courts Tuesday to challenge an executive order instructing U.S. agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born to immigrant parents who are not themselves citizens, an effort to unilaterally eliminate the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of birthright citizenship.
The order, which asserts that such children are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States and thus aren't protected by the 14th Amendment, also includes the children of some mothers in the country legally but under temporary status, such as foreign students and tourists. Without citizenship, they would be blocked from working, voting and accessing federal programs like Medicaid.
Eighteen states and two cities, San Francisco and Washington D.C., filed their lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts, arguing that birthright citizenship as defined by the 14th Amendment is "automatic" for all people born in the U.S. and that Trump had violated the Constitution. Another four states filed their lawsuit in federal court in Washington.
“Presidents are powerful,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin told the New York Times, “but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.”
The lawsuits target a central part of Trump's plan to crack down on immigration and deport potentially millions of people. If allowed to stand, Trump's order could deny citizenship to over 150,000 children born annually in the United States, according to the the office of Washington Attorney General Andrea Nick Brown, who warned that it might render them "citizens to no country at all."
Trump's order contradicts more than 100 years of legal precedent established by courts and federal officials interpreting the 14th Amendment as a guarantee of citizenship to every child born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents' legal status, with few exceptions — like children of foreign diplomats.
Shares