Federal court blocks Trump executive order to end birthright citizenship

SEATTLE (CN) — Attorneys general from Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon won a victory in their fight for the constitutional guarantee of citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil to a federal judge in Seattle on Thursday, with a federal judge issuing a temporary restraining order to block an executive order targeting birthright citizenship.

President Donald Trump signed the “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” order hours after his inauguration Monday. The order is aimed at narrowing birthright citizenship to people who have one or more parents who are already citizens.

But U.S. District Judge John Coughenor, a Ronald Reagan appointee, knocked back “blatantly unconstitutional” executive order Thursday morning, less than 30 minutes into the hearing in the packed Seattle courtroom. The temporary restraining order will last 14 days and the executive order is set to take effect on Feb. 19.

“This unconstitutional and un-American executive order will hopefully never take effect thanks to the actions states are taking on behalf of their residents,” Washington state Attorney General Nicholas Brown said in a statement following the hearing.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes called Coughenor’s decision “the first of many wins” in the fight against overreaching executive actions taken by the new administration.

“No president can change the Constitution on a whim and today’s decision affirms that,” Mayes said in a statement.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield described the executive order as an attempt by Trump to sidestep the 14th Amendment and break over a century of established law.

“While the president has every right to issue executive orders during his time in office, he does not have the authority to arbitrarily deny Americans their constitutional rights,” said Rayfield.

The four states formed a coalition to sue Trump and his administration heads on Tuesday, arguing the controversial order will affect hundreds of thousands of children nationwide and that Trump lacks the authority to amend the Constitution. Eighteen other states, as well as the District of Columbia and the city and county of San Francisco also filed lawsuits challenging the order on Tuesday.

Led by Brown, the attorneys general argued in their motion for a temporary restraining order that the executive order will create a “permanent underclass of people excluded from American society, impeding community integration, self-sufficiency and a thriving democracy."

The federal defendants, which include Trump and many of his cabinet members, argued that the lawsuit was filed prematurely since it won’t take effect until next month.

Under the executive order, children born to parents legally in the country on temporary visas, like students or workers, or to undocumented immigrants will lose automatic citizenship recognition.

The attorneys general argue that the children affected by the order will face severe and long-lasting consequences, including an increased likelihood of experiencing disease, depression, anxiety and social isolation as well as the loss of state-supplied food and cash benefits.

The states will also face a reduction in federal funding and reimbursements for programs they administer, like Medicaid and foster care programs, in addition to facing the burden of quickly changing the operational structures of such programs, the attorneys general say.

The 14th Amendment mandates that anyone “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” It was ratified in 1868 to establish citizenship for Black Americans post-slavery after the Civil War and has historically been interpreted to extend birthright citizenship to those born in the U.S. to parents who are not citizens.

Trump’s executive order refutes that interpretation.

“The 14th Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” Trump proclaimed in his order. “The 14th Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”