In a dramatic legal showdown, US President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship has sparked multiple lawsuits, with Democratic states and civil rights organizations leading the charge in federal courts.
The lawsuits, which were lodged within hours of the executive order being signed, argue that Trump’s attempt to overturn the long-standing principle of birthright citizenship violates the U.S. Constitution. The move has been widely criticized by those who contend that it would harm hundreds of thousands of children born on U.S. soil each year.
A coalition of 22 states led by Democrats, along with the District of Columbia and San Francisco, have launched their own cases in federal courts in Boston and Seattle. The plaintiffs claim that Trump’s order infringes upon constitutional protections granted by the 14th Amendment, which enshrines citizenship for anyone born in the US. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell has warned that if upheld, Trump’s plan would prevent over 150,000 children from obtaining citizenship annually.
At the core of the issue lies the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, ratified in 1868, which asserts that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Trump’s order seeks to narrow the scope of this guarantee by specifying that children born in the US would not automatically receive citizenship if their mothers were in the country unlawfully, or on temporary visas like student or tourist visas. His administration has long expressed concern about the phenomenon of “birth tourism,” where pregnant foreign nationals travel to the US to give birth and secure citizenship for their children.
The lawsuits reference the landmark 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the Court affirmed that children born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents are entitled to U.S. citizenship. One of the plaintiffs challenging the executive order, “O. Doe,” a Massachusetts woman who is living in the U.S. under temporary protected status, is set to give birth in March and could be directly impacted by the policy.
Legal experts, however, argue that Trump’s executive order is unlikely to stand up in court. They point out that any change to birthright citizenship would require a constitutional amendment, which demands a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and approval from three-quarters of state legislatures.
