From Nate Raymond (NSE:)
BOSTON (Reuters) – Democratic-led states and civil rights groups filed a series of lawsuits on Tuesday challenging U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship in an early attempt by his opponents to block his plan in court.
After his inauguration on Monday, Trump, a Republican, ordered US agencies to refuse to recognize citizenship for children born in the US if neither the mother nor the father is a US citizen or legal permanent resident.
Twenty-two Democratic-led states, along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco, filed several lawsuits in federal courts in Boston and Seattle alleging that Trump violated the US Constitution.
Two similar cases were filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, immigrant organizations and a pregnant woman hours after Trump signed the executive order, kicking off the first major court battle of his administration.
The lawsuits are aimed at the centerpiece of Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration. If allowed to stand, Trump’s order would deny citizenship to more than 150,000 children born annually in the United States for the first time, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office said.
“President Trump has no authority to take away constitutional rights,” she said in a statement.
Losing citizenship would prevent those individuals from accessing federal programs such as Medicaid and, when they age, from legally working or voting, states say.
“Today’s imminent lawsuit sends a clear message to the Trump administration that we will stand up for our residents and their basic constitutional rights,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said in a statement.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
More lawsuits are expected from Democratic-led states and advocacy groups challenging other aspects of Trump’s agenda, and there are already cases challenging Elon Musk’s Department for Government Efficiency and an executive order signed by Trump that weakens job protections for government employees.
PRECEDENT OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE USA IN 1898
Three of the four lawsuits were filed in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. All decisions by judges in those New England states will be reviewed by the Boston-based US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the only federal appeals court where all active judges are appointed by the Democratic Party.
Four states have filed a separate case in Washington state, which is being heard by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. That court often stymied Trump’s first-term agenda, even as his ideological makeup shifted to the right thanks to his judicial appointments.
The lawsuits claim that Trump’s executive order violated the right contained in the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which states that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen.
The complaints cite the 1898 US Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, a decision that found children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to US citizenship.
Plaintiffs challenging the order include a Massachusetts woman identified only as “O. Doe” who is in the country through temporary protection status and is due to give birth in March.
Temporary protected status is available to people whose homelands have experienced natural disasters, armed conflicts or other extraordinary events and currently covers more than one million people from 17 countries.
Several other lawsuits challenging aspects of Trump’s other early executive actions are pending.
The Treasury Employees Union, which represents federal government employees in 37 agencies and departments, filed a lawsuit late Monday challenging an order signed by Trump that makes it easier to fire thousands of federal agency employees and replace them with political loyalists.
