A coalition of 18 States in the United States has filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, seeking to block his controversial executive order that denies United States citizenship to children born on American soil to undocumented immigrants.
The legal challenge, filed Tuesday in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, marked the first major battle over Trump’s immigration policies in his second term.
The lawsuit, led by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin, alongside attorneys general from California and Massachusetts, argued that the order was an unconstitutional overreach of executive power.
“Presidents are powerful, but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen,” Platkin stated, calling Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship “extraordinary and extreme.”
The legal action was also backed by the cities of San Francisco and Washington, D.C., reinforcing broad opposition to the administration’s move.
LEADERSHIP reports that on Monday, just hours into his second term, Trump signed the executive order declaring that children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants would no longer be recognised as citizens. The directive also extended to certain children born to legal but temporary residents, such as foreign students or tourists.
Trump’s order argued that these children were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and, therefore, do not qualify for citizenship under the 14th Amendment—a stance that directly contradicts over a century of legal interpretation.
For more than 100 years, courts and past administrations have consistently upheld birthright citizenship, affirming that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to all children born on U.S. soil, with the sole exception being children of accredited foreign diplomats.
Despite the administration’s bold claims, legal scholars predicted a tough road ahead for Trump’s order.
“If that’s true of student loans or COVID-19 rules or whatever, you’d think it would be true of citizenship as well,” said Gerard Magliocca, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, referring to recent Supreme Court decisions that blocked executive actions on major political issues without congressional approval.
He added, “The states are right, and the courts are probably going to agree with them.”
While most legal experts believed the courts will reject Trump’s order, some conservative judges have signaled support for his interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a Trump appointee, has previously compared undocumented immigrants to an “invading army”—a comparison echoed by Texas state attorneys and Trump himself, who has described illegal border crossings as an “ongoing invasion.”
However, the Fifth Circuit does not oversee cases from Massachusetts, where the lawsuit was filed, making it unlikely that the administration’s arguments will gain immediate traction in this legal battle.
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