Judge hears lawsuit over Trump’s order to cancel birthright citizenship

A federal judge in Seattle will hear first arguments Thursday in a lawsuit filed by several states seeking to block President Donald Trump’s executive order ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship regardless of parents’ immigration status.

Federal Judge John Coughenour scheduled the session to consider the request from Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington. The case is one of five lawsuits brought by 22 states and several immigrant advocacy groups across the country. The lawsuits include personal testimony from prosecutors who are U.S. citizens by birthright, and names of pregnant women who fear their children will not become U.S. citizens.

The order signed by Trump on the day of his inauguration is scheduled to go into effect on February 19. It could affect thousands of people born in the country, according to one of the lawsuits. In 2022, there were approximately 255,000 births of citizen children to mothers living in the country illegally and approximately 153,000 births to both parents in such a situation, according to the lawsuit filed by the four states in Seattle.

The United States is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship, the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil,” applies. Most are in the American Continent, including Canada and Mexico.

The lawsuits argue that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship to people born and naturalized in the country and states have interpreted the amendment that way for a century.

Ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, the amendment reads: “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 in which they reside.”

Trump’s order affirms that children of non-Americans are not subject to US jurisdiction and directs federal agencies not to recognize citizenship for children who do not have at least one parent who is a citizen.

A key case on the issue unfolded in 1898. The Supreme Court held that Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants, was a U.S. citizen because he was born in the country. After a trip abroad, he faced denial of reentry by the federal government on the grounds that he was not a citizen under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

But some advocates of immigration restrictions have argued that that case clearly applied to children born to parents who were both legal immigrants. They say it is less clear whether it applies to children born to parents who do not have a residence permit.

Trump’s executive order prompted attorneys general to share their personal connections to birthright citizenship. For example, Connecticut state Attorney General William Tong, a birthright U.S. citizen and the nation’s first elected Chinese American attorney general, said the lawsuit was personal to him.

“There is no legitimate legal debate on this issue. But the fact that Trump is completely wrong will not stop him from causing serious harm right now to American families like mine,” Tong said this week.

One of the lawsuits includes the case of a pregnant woman, identified as “Carmen,” who is not a citizen, but has lived in the United States for more than 15 years and has a pending visa application that could give her permanent residency status.

“Depriving children of the ‘priceless treasure’ of citizenship is a serious injury,” the lawsuit says. “It denies them the full membership in American society to which they are entitled.”