ACLU Challenges Trump’s Latest Birthright Citizenship Order
The American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of civil rights groups asked a federal judge on August 11 to make it unquestionably clear that President Donald Trump’s newest executive order restricting birthright citizenship cannot be enforced against families protected by a recent Supreme Court ruling, according to court filings.
The legal challenge follows the Supreme Court’s June 30 decision in Trump v. Barbara, where the justices ruled 6-3 against the administration’s initial attempt to alter constitutional citizenship rules. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause put the question of citizenship “once and forever to rest,” extending the promise of citizenship to “every free-born person in this land.”
Despite that defeat, President Trump signed a pair of executive orders targeting birthright citizenship earlier in the month. The administration’s primary directive declares certain individuals ineligible for citizenship at birth if neither parent is a citizen, specifically targeting children of “alien enemies,” foreign government employees, or parents who engage in a “commercial transaction” to secure birthright citizenship, including paying to ensure a mother is present in the U.S. to give birth. A second order directs the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to block individuals from entering the country for “birth tourism.”
In response, the ACLU, joined by the ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of Maine, ACLU of Massachusetts, the Legal Defense Fund, the Asian Law Caucus, and the Democracy Defenders Fund, returned to federal court in New Hampshire where the original class-action lawsuit was filed. The groups are asking the judge to ensure the babies covered under the previous litigation remain shielded from the new directives.
“President Trump may not like the fact that birthright citizenship is a constitutional right, and he may not like that he lost in the Supreme Court, but that is really beside the point,” said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead counsel. “It’s well past time for these illegal and cruel attacks on children’s citizenship to end.”
Carol Rose, executive director at the ACLU of Massachusetts, described the executive actions as “a ham-handed attempt to distract the American people from the Supreme Court’s clear holding,” while Amia Trigg, deputy director of litigation at the Legal Defense Fund, stated that the administration is attempting to “double down on his illegal attack on this constitutional protection.”
Wong Kim Ark. However, civil rights advocates argue that the executive branch lacks the constitutional authority to rewrite the 14th Amendment through executive fiat.
