Trump sued by 22 states and pregnant women over ‘flagrantly illegal’ birthright citizenship order
A pregnant woman living in Massachusetts with temporary protected status is expected to give birth in March. But under the terms of Donald Trump’s executive order that unilaterally redefines the Constitution, upending federal law and decades of established Supreme Court precedent, her baby will not be a citizen.
She is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the newly inaugurated president and members of his administration, accused of mounting a “flagrantly illegal” attempt to “strip citizenship from millions of Americans with a stroke of a pen.”
The lawsuit was filed by Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights on behalf of Brazilian Worker Center and La Colaborativa, which have “numerous members who are either currently pregnant or planning to grow their families in the future, and whose children will be among the targeted citizens,” according to the complaint.
The lawsuit is among at least two federal complaints filed by several immigrants’ advocacy organizations and civil rights groups on behalf of immigrant families and expectant mothers who flooded the groups with complaints and fears over what will happen to their families.
Eighteen state attorneys general and officials in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco also sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to block the president’s “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”
“Our constitution is not open to reinterpretation by executive order or presidential decree,” New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Tuesday.
Plaintiffs are demanding the courts to immediately hit pause on Trump’s order, which revives a once-fringe right-wing legal effort to get a conservative-majority Supreme Court to redefine the 14th Amendment.
Another lawsuit from New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support, Make the Road New York, and the League of United Latin American Citizens accuses the Trump administration of “straightforwardly” violating the Constitution with an attempt to “upend one of the most fundamental American constitutional values.”
Stripping citizenship from immigrant children threatens them “with a lifetime of exclusion from society and fear of deportation from the only country they have ever known,” according to the complaint. “But that is illegal. The Constitution and Congress — not President Trump — dictate who is entitled to full membership in American society.”
Trump’s order, among the first signed by the president in his first hours in office, attempts to revoke citizenship for children born in the United States under two sweeping conditions.
Under the order’s terms, children can be denied citizenship “when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth,” or “when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause states that “all persons 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.”
The Supreme Court affirmed the principle in 1898, clarifying that children born in the United States to immigrant parents are citizens, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
The 14th Amendment was “specifically enshrined” to “ensure that no one — not even the President — could deny children born in America their rightful place as citizens,” according to the complaint from New Hampshire plaintiffs.
