A federal judge in Seattle has blocked the Trump administration from implementing an executive order that curtails the automatic right to birthright citizenship in the United States, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
On Thursday, US District Judge John Coughenour issued a temporary restraining order at the request of four Democratic-led states, preventing the administration from enforcing the order signed by President Donald Trump on Monday, his first day in office.
“This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” Judge Coughenour told a US Justice Department lawyer defending the policy during a hearing in Seattle.
The order, which denies US
citizenship to children born in the country if neither parent is a citizen or legal permanent resident, has already sparked five lawsuits by civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states. Critics argue that it flagrantly violates the US Constitution.
“Under this order, babies being born today don’t count as US citizens,” Washington Assistant Attorney General Lane Polozola said at the start of the hearing.
Representing the Democratic attorneys general from Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon, Polozola urged the court to block the administration from enforcing what he called a key component of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The challengers argue that Trump’s executive action directly contravenes the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil.
In a legal brief filed late Wednesday, the US Justice Department defended the order, calling it an “integral part” of the president’s efforts to address what it described as the country’s “broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border.”
The lawsuit in Seattle has been moving faster than similar cases filed in four other jurisdictions.
Judge Coughenour, an appointee of former Republican President Ronald Reagan, is overseeing the case and could issue a ruling from the bench or take time to issue a written decision before the order takes effect.
If enforced, the order would deny citizenship to any child born after February 19 whose parents are not US citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Such children would face deportation and be ineligible for Social Security numbers, government benefits, and legal employment in the future.
According to the Democratic-led states, more than 150,000 newborns annually would be denied citizenship under the policy.
They argued that the understanding of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause was cemented in 1898 when the US Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that children born in the US to non-citizen parents are entitled to citizenship.
The Justice Department, however, contends that the 14th Amendment was never intended to grant citizenship universally to all individuals born in the country.
It argued that the Wong Kim Ark decision applied only to children of legal permanent residents. The department also claimed the four states lack standing to sue, arguing that only individuals—not states—can bring claims under the citizenship clause.
In a related development, 36 Republican lawmakers in the US House of Representatives introduced legislation on Tuesday that seeks to restrict automatic citizenship to only those born to US citizens or lawful permanent residents.
The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, overturned the Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, which had ruled that Black Americans could not be US citizens.