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President Donald Trump signing executive orders (WRC/YouTube).
Pregnant women across the country have been joining forces to file lawsuits against the federal government over the constitutionality of President Donald Trump‘s executive order ending birthright citizenship in the United States, according to court records.
Attorneys in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state have filed lawsuits on behalf of expecting parents in response to Trump’s order last week, which has been blasted as “blatantly unconstitutional” by federal judges as it runs into legal trouble.
Attorneys general of 18 states and two major cities, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have also teamed up to challenge the order — filing a joint lawsuit last Tuesday, Jan. 21, in federal district court.
“Plaintiffs bring this action to protect their states, localities, and residents from the President’s flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage,” the complaint says. “The principle of birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment unambiguously and expressly confers citizenship on ‘[a]ll persons born’ in and ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States. More than 125 years ago, the Supreme Court confirmed that this entitles a child born in the United States to noncitizen parents to automatic citizenship.”
The suit, which was filed in Massachusetts against Trump and the U.S. government, notes how Congress “subsequently codified that understanding in the Immigration and Nationality Act” and describes how the executive branch has “long recognized” that attempts to deny citizenship to children based on their parents’ status would be “unquestionably unconstitutional,” per the complaint.
“President Trump now seeks to abrogate this well-established and longstanding Constitutional principle by executive fiat,” the suit says.
Five pregnant women who are part of a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Maryland, along with two immigrant advocacy groups, have condemned Trump’s order as a “flagrant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment” and the history underlying the text of those enactments, “all of which guarantee the fundamental right to citizenship for all children born in the United States,” their suit says.
“The President has no unilateral authority to override rights recognized in the Constitution or in federal statutes,” the complaint states. “The principle of birthright citizenship is a foundation of our national democracy, is woven throughout the laws of our nation, and has shaped a shared sense of national belonging for generation after generation of citizens.”
Three pregnant women in Washington state — Alicia Chavarria Lopez, Cherly Norales Castillo and Delmy Franco Aleman — joined forces with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project to file a class action suit in federal court on Friday, Jan. 24, saying children will be left “stateless” under Trump’s executive order and unable to be recognized as citizens.
“Citizenship is the fundamental marker of belonging in this country,” the suit alleges. “Indeed, without citizenship, the babies soon to be born in this country whom President Trump unilaterally and unconstitutionally seeks to strip of citizenship will be left without any legal immigration status.”
In addition to Trump and the federal government, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Department of State, Attorney General James McHenry, the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have all been named in lawsuits related to birthright citizenship over the past week.
Trump’s order ultimately argues that the 14th Amendment “has always” excluded people whose parents are in the United States illegally on account of them not being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., the order says. Requests for comment by Law&Crime were not immediately returned Sunday.
