cnn
—
A lawsuit filed Tuesday by more than a dozen Democratic state attorneys general challenges President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, a major constitutional challenge to one of the White House’s signature policies.
The lawsuit alleges that a Trump executive order signed Monday violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which grants the constitutional right of citizenship to all minors born in the United States.
“Yet, despite the president’s broad powers to set immigration policy, the Citizenship Deprivation Order falls far beyond the legal limits of the president’s authority,” the lawsuit states.
The case could end up becoming the first major Supreme Court showdown for Trump’s second-term agenda. The states filed the suit in federal court in Massachusetts, meaning any appeal of a ruling from that court will go through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, where all the judges are Democratic appointees.
The Supreme Court has upheld birthright citizenship in the past and there is also a federal law passed by Congress, prior to the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, which establishes that minors born on American soil have the right to citizenship.
“The president has the right to propose whatever policy he sees fit,” New Jersey Democratic Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who is co-leading the new lawsuit, told CNN.
“When it comes to birthright citizenship, something that has been part of the fabric of this nation for centuries, that has been in the Constitution for 157 years since the Civil War, that has been upheld by the Supreme Court twice “The president cannot, with one stroke of the pen, rewrite the Constitution and end the rule of law,” he added.
Eighteen states, joined by the city of San Francisco and Washington, are also seeking a preliminary injunction blocking the policy before the Trump administration can take action to enforce it.
The lawsuit is the second challenge to the policy filed since Trump signed the controversial executive order. The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights and immigration groups filed a similar challenge Monday in federal court in New Hampshire, which is also on the 1st Circuit.
Although Trump signed the decree just hours after taking office, his advisors anticipated that the measure, which he has been proposing since his first term, would be the subject of numerous litigation and tried to create a deliberative process through which the end of citizenship by birthright.
The order prohibits federal agencies from issuing documents affirming US citizenship or recognizing documents claiming to recognize US citizenship, according to a fact sheet obtained by CNN.
The measure applies to minors born 30 days after the issuance of the decree. The children to whom it applies are those born in the United States to parents who are illegally in the United States or in situations in which the mother is temporarily in the United States, for example on a visa, and the father is not a citizen.
The decree is based on the phrase “subject to its jurisdiction” contained in the Fourteenth Amendment. Some immigration hardliners have argued that children of undocumented immigrants are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and should not be considered citizens under the Constitution.
Legal experts had previously expressed skepticism to CNN that such an argument could succeed in court, arguing that the relevant language referred to the children of foreign diplomats subject to US law, and to situations in which a foreign nation has invaded and occupies part of the country.
Both the ACLU and the attorneys general have described filing their challenges as an easy decision, from a legal point of view, believing that the merits weigh heavily on their side. It may be one of multiple Trump immigration policies being challenged in court.
“If it is not stopped in the courts, it will really, as I have said, strike at the heart of American communities, both with its attack on birthright citizenship, but also with many of these other immigration enforcement activities.” Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the ACLU, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.
Since Trump has been predicting for years his desire to end birthright citizenship, his opponents have had months to prepare their legal challenges.
Among the plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit are prospective parents “who may be considered covered by the decree,” according to the lawsuit.
The states, in their own lawsuit, claim that the decree would deny citizenship to at least 150,000 minors born to two parents without legal status.
They argue that their systems would be overburdened by having to take on a greater financial burden to provide services, since noncitizens cannot access health care, education and other federally funded services.
“Under the decree, those children born after February 19, 2025, who would have unquestionably been considered citizens if they had been born two days ago, will lack any legal status in the eyes of the federal government,” the states argue in their lawsuit. “All of them will be deportable, and many will be stateless.”
Affected minors, the states argue, “will lose the ability to access countless federal services that are available to their fellow Americans. And even though the Constitution guarantees their citizenship, they will lose their right to participate in the economic and civic life of their own country: to work, vote, serve on juries, and run for certain offices.”
