Jan. 23 (UPI) — A federal judge Thursday signed a temporary restraining order temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order that would end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. The judge in Seattle said it was blatantly unconstitutional.
“I have been on the bench for over four decades,” said Judge John Coughenour. “I can’t remember another case where the case presented is as clear as it is here. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”
Coughenour approved the restraining order request from four Democratic-led states. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship.
Coughenour, a federal judge in Seattle, was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
According to the U.S. National Archives, the 14th Amendment ratified in 1868 “extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people.”
Section 1 of the 14th amendment said, “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 said that, despite the U.S. Constitution, people born in the United States “when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth” don’t have birthright citizenship.
Trump’s order is blocked for 14 days when a briefing on a preliminary injunction to permanently block the order will be heard.
Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon brought the case.
Lawyers for those states wrote, “Nothing in the Constitution grants the President, federal agencies, or anyone else authority to impose conditions on the grant of citizenship to individuals born in the United States.”
The attorneys argued states have a concrete interest in the case because funding for Medicaid and Children’s Health Program could be lost if the order stands.
Birthright citizens could be turned into undocumented non-citizens if Trump’s order stands.
If children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants were denied constitutional birthright citizenship, they wouldn’t be able to travel freely and re-enter the United States and could not get Social Security numbers.
The lawyers asserted that those birthright citizens would be “part of a new, presidentially-created underclass in the United States.”
Justice Department lawyers defending Trump’s order said the states lack legal standing to block the order.
“A third party, including a state, has no legally cognizable interest in the recognition of citizenship by the federal government of a particular individual — let alone economic benefits or burdens that are wholly collateral to citizenship status,” Justice Department litigator Brad Rosenberg wrote.
Twenty-three Democratic attorneys general have filed legal challenges in federal courts to defend birthright citizenship, arguing the president lacks legal authority to re-write the Constitution or the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit Tuesday to challenge Trump’s order.
That same day, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde spoke directly to Trump from the altar of the Washington National Cathedral urging him to have mercy on immigrants and LGBTQ people who are fearful he will use his presidential power to harm them.
The birthright citizenship case could be ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
