Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Birthright Citizenship Order
(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from restricting who is eligible for automatic US citizenship at birth, in an early legal setback for the new administration’s hard-line immigration agenda.
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US District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle called Trump’s executive order “blatantly unconstitutional” and questioned the quality of lawyering within the administration. The order, which Trump signed on his first day in office, denies automatic citizenship to US-born children of immigrants who entered the country illegally or have a temporary legal status.
Coughenour stopped the administration from taking any steps to carry out the order for 14 days and will apply nationwide. The judge, who was appointed under former President Ronald Reagan more than 40 years ago, will next consider whether to sign a longer-term injunction. The judge announced his decision from the bench on Thursday immediately after hearing arguments.
“It just boggles my mind” that a lawyer could argue that the order was constitutional, Coughenour said.
The administration is facing at least six lawsuits over Trump’s birthright citizenship order. Federal judges in Maryland and New Hampshire have hearings scheduled in the coming weeks to consider whether to also block the order from taking effect.
The Justice Department released a statement saying it “will vigorously defend” Trump’s order, “which correctly interprets the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. We look forward to presenting a full merits argument to the Court and to the American people, who are desperate to see our Nation’s laws enforced.”
“This is about people,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, whose office is leading the case before Coughenour, said after the hearing on Thursday. “Babies are being born today, tomorrow” who need this clarity.
Immigration Law
The order, which was set to fully take effect Feb. 19, includes fathers and mothers who aren’t US citizens or lawful permanent residents and includes those who are students or on work or tourist visas. Under the order, the policy is to apply to babies born 30 days after it was signed. But another section directs certain agencies to ensure that their regulations and policies are “consistent” with the order and to release public guidance within the next 30 days — meaning officials were poised to start working on it sooner.
Coughenour’s order came in a case brought by a group of Democratic state officials led by Brown. The states contend that Trump’s action violates longstanding US immigration law and the text of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.
The 14th amendment, adopted in 1868 after the Civil War to clarify the status of babies born to formerly enslaved people, has long been interpreted by courts as giving citizenship to nearly all babies born on US soil. It states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Trump’s order turns on what it means to be “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Some conservatives have argued this language should be interpreted to exclude people who illegally enter the country. The more common understanding of the phrase has been that even undocumented people are covered since they can be charged with crimes under federal and state laws and pay taxes, for example.
New ‘Underclass’
The challengers have cited a demographics analysis estimating that at least 150,000 babies born in the US each year would be affected. Lawyers for the state coalition led by Washington argued that allowing it to take effect would place these children “into positions of instability and insecurity as part of a new, Presidentially-created underclass in the United States.”
A lawyer for Washington argued that notwithstanding the 30-day implementation delay, the order was already harming families whose babies would be affected, as well as state governments.
The Justice Department argued that immediate, temporary intervention by a US judge was unnecessary because Trump had already delayed the start date by 30 days from the signing. The government also argued that the states lacked standing to sue on behalf of their citizens and that they failed to identify a direct harm to their interests if the order took effect.
The states argued they would have to spend more money to provide health care and other services to noncitizen children since they would no longer be eligible for certain federal programs. The Justice Department said that if states wanted to offer those benefits, that was their choice.
Government lawyers cited 19th-century legal texts to support their position that noncitizens weren’t “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US because they didn’t have formal “allegiance” to the nation, so their children shouldn’t qualify for citizenship.
(Updated with Justice Department comment in sixth paragraph.)
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