A federal district court judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to limit birthright citizenship on Thursday, calling it "blatantly unconstitutional."
Setting off a protracted legal battle over Trump's move to deny citizenship to children born in the United States if neither their mother nor father is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, Senior U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour issued a temporary restraining order at the urging of four Democratic-led states - Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon. This was one of the five lawsuits filed by Democratic attorneys general and immigrant rights organisations challenging the order.
The judge heard 25 minutes of arguments before issuing the order, blocking the policy from taking effect for 14 days. "I’ve been on the bench for over four decades," Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said. "I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order."
Also read: Why Trump's challenge to birthright citizenship could set the ground for a legal battle
What the petitioners argued
Lawyers representing the four states that President Trump and the federal government now seek to impose a modern version of Dred Scott, referring to U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that people descended from slaves were not citizens. However, the 14th Amendment emerged in the transformative post-Civil War era dismantled this exclusionary system, declaring that "all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
"But nothing in the Constitution grants the President, federal agencies, or anyone else authority to impose conditions on the grant of citizenship to individuals born in the United States," they argued.
Without a restraining order, the children born in the Plaintiff States will soon be rendered undocumented, subject to removal or detention, and many stateless, the lawyers continued. "They will be denied their right to travel freely and re-enter the United States. They will lose their ability to obtain a Social Security number and work lawfully as they grow up. They will be denied their right to vote, serve on juries, and run for certain offices. And they will be placed into positions of instability and insecurity as part of a new, Presidentially-created underclass in the United States," the lawyers said.
They further argued that Trump’s order would also cause the plaintiff states to lose federal funding that supports programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. They would also have to bear the burden of modifying their administration of those programs to account for the change.
What the Justice Department argued
The Justice Department lawyers told Coughenour that the birthright citizenship order is an "integral part" of Trump’s efforts to address the country's broken immigration system.
They argued that Trump had the authority to issue the order and added that the states lacked standing to sue based on their alleged economic harms. "A third party, including a state, has no legally cognizable interest in the recognition of citizenship by the federal government of a particular individual — let alone economic benefits or burdens that are wholly collateral to citizenship status," Justice Department litigator Brad Rosenberg wrote.
While focusing on the technical clause that the states cannot sue, Rosenberg also anchored his arguments on how the courts have incorrectly interpreted the 14th Amendment for more than 100 years.
"Ample historical evidence shows that the children of non-resident aliens are subject to foreign powers — and, thus, are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and are not constitutionally entitled to birthright citizenship," Rosenberg wrote.
