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A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s executive order denying US citizenship to children born in the country by unauthorized immigrants.
John Coughenour, the US district judge presiding over the case in Washington state, called the policy “plainly unconstitutional” on Thursday after issuing a temporary restraining order halting the president’s measure, according to media reports.
The decision stems from a lawsuit filed Tuesday by four Democratic state attorneys general led by Washington state — one of several legal challenges quickly launched against the order that Trump signed on Monday, just hours after being sworn in as the US president.
Other Democratic state attorneys general as well as civil rights groups filed separate lawsuits this week to overturn the birthright ban, all citing similar violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that all “persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . . are citizens of the United States”.
“If allowed to stand, the unconstitutional and un-American order would cause thousands of newborns and children in Washington to lose their ability to participate fully and fairly in American society as citizens, despite the constitutional guarantee of their citizenship,” the Washington Attorney General’s office said Tuesday. which was joined in the lawsuit by Oregon, Arizona and Illinois.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story
