By Dan Catchpole and Nate Raymond (NSE:)
SEATTLE (Reuters) – A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing an executive order limiting the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, calling it “manifestly unconstitutional.”
US District Judge John Coughenour, at the urging of four Democratic-led states, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing the order, which the Republican president signed on Monday during his first day in office.
“This is a patently unconstitutional order,” the judge told a U.S. Justice Department lawyer defending Trump’s order.
The order has already become the subject of five lawsuits by civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states, who call it a flagrant violation of the US Constitution.
“Under this order, babies born today do not count as U.S. citizens,” Washington Assistant Attorney General Lane Polozola told Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour at the start of the hearing in Seattle.
Polozola — on behalf of Democratic attorneys general from Washington state, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — urged the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the administration from enforcing this key element of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Opponents argue that Trump’s action violates the right enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
In his executive order, Trump ordered US agencies to refuse to recognize citizenship for children born in the United States if neither the mother nor the father are US citizens or lawful permanent residents.
In a filing late Wednesday, the US Justice Department called the order “an integral part” of the president’s efforts “to address this nation’s broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border.”
The lawsuit filed in Seattle has progressed faster than four other cases filed because of the executive order. It was awarded to Coughenour, the pick of Republican former President Ronald Reagan.
The judge could potentially rule from the bench after hearing arguments, or he could wait to write a decision before Trump’s order takes effect.
According to the order, all children born after Feb. 19 whose mothers or fathers are not citizens or lawful permanent residents will be subject to deportation and will be barred from obtaining Social Security numbers, various government benefits, and the ability to legally work as they age.
More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship annually if Trump’s order is allowed to stand, according to Democratic-led states.
Democratic attorneys general said the understanding of the Constitution’s citizenship clause was cemented 127 years ago when the US Supreme Court ruled that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to US citizenship.
The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 after the Civil War and overturned the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which declared that the protections of the Constitution did not extend to enslaved blacks.
But the Justice Department argued in its filing that the 14th Amendment had never been interpreted to universally extend citizenship to anyone born in the country, and that the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark applied only to the children of permanent residents. inhabitants.
The Justice Department said the four-state case also “misses multiple thresholds.” The department said that only individuals, not states, can file claims under the Citizenship Clause and that states do not have the necessary legal standing to sue over Trump’s order.
Thirty-six of Trump’s Republican allies in the US House of Representatives separately introduced legislation on Tuesday to limit automatic citizenship to children born to citizens or legal permanent residents.
