- A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship.
- The order was challenged by multiple lawsuits, claiming it violated the 14th Amendment.
- In temporarily halting the order, the Seattle judge called it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
A federal judge in Seattle temporarily halted President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order denying automatic citizenship for anyone born on US soil, calling the move to end birthright citizenship “blatantly unconstitutional.”
“I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that is a constitutional order,” US District Judge John Coughenour told the Trump administration’s attorneys after hearing arguments Thursday morning, according to multiple news outlets in the courtroom. “It boggles my mind.”
“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,” the judge added.
The ruling was made in a case brought by four states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon. The case is among at least five lawsuits filed this week challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship order on the grounds that it violates the 14th Amendment.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.
In the judge’s ruling granting a 14-day temporary restraining order, Coughenour wrote, “There is a strong likelihood that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of their claims that the Executive Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment and Immigration and Nationality Act.”
On Tuesday, attorneys general from a total of 22 states and two cities across the country filed two separate lawsuits in a bid to block the order. A hearing has not yet been held in the first suit, which 18 states and the top law enforcement officers of Washington, DC, and San Francisco had joined.
The lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon argued that the president “has no authority to amend the Constitution or supersede the Citizenship Clause’s grant of citizenship to individuals born in the United States. Nor is he empowered by any other constitutional provision or law to determine who shall or shall not be granted United States citizenship at birth.”
“United States citizens are entitled to a broad array of rights and benefits as a result of their citizenship,” the lawsuit said. “Withholding citizenship or stripping individuals of their citizenship will result in an immediate and irreparable harm to those individuals and to the Plaintiff States.”
Trump’s order targeting birthright citizenship, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” was signed shortly after Trump was sworn into office for a second presidential term on Monday. It was scheduled to take effect 30 days after its signing.
Birthright citizenship is a policy that automatically gives citizenship to anyone born in the US or US territories. Under Trump’s executive order, federal agencies would be barred from issuing any documents granting citizenship to US-born children whose parents live in the country illegally, or cases in which the mother was lawfully in the country temporarily — such as a student or tourist — but the father is neither a US citizen or lawful permanent resident.
The ACLU also brought a lawsuit on Monday that said at least 150,000 children would be affected.
Other immigration executive orders Trump signed after he was sworn in included declaring a national emergency, sending the military to the US-Mexico border, shutting down the CBP One app from which immigrants seeking asylum could submit information, and restricting federal funding to sanctuary cities — which have limited cooperation with agents working to deport immigrants in the US illegally.
