A federal judge has temporarily blocked the birthright citizenship executive order that President Donald Trump issued on Monday, which seeks to bar certain children born to foreign parents on U.S. soil from automatically receiving citizenship. The order is now on hold for at least two weeks.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is,” said Western District of Washington Judge John C. Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”
On the first night of his second presidential term, Trump signed a long-promised executive order challenging the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The 14th Amendment “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” the order countered.
Babies born in the U.S. to unlawfully present parents or to lawfully but temporarily present parents (such as people “on a student, work, or tourist visa”) would no longer automatically receive citizenship, according to the order. Trump directed government departments and agencies to stop issuing and recognizing citizenship-affirming documents to those children starting 30 days after the order was issued.
The order quickly faced lawsuits from states, immigrant advocacy groups, and expectant mothers. On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union, three of its New England state chapters, and several other organizations sued Trump in federal court in New Hampshire. The next day, 18 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court and four others sued in Washington.
The latter lawsuit estimated that in the U.S., over 150,000 children are born to undocumented parents each year. Trump’s executive order “would deny rights and benefits” to those individuals “and leave some of them stateless,” it argued, per a New York Times report. The states also held that “the administration’s order created an immediate burden for them, requiring them to alter systems that determine eligibility for federal-backed programs.”
Many legal experts have expressed skepticism that a birthright citizenship executive order would pass constitutional muster. Coughenour proved sympathetic to that argument. “Frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order,” he said. “It just boggles my mind.”
