Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order prompts blitz of litigation

A federal judge's ruling blocking President Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship is just the beginning of a blitz of litigation set to play out in the coming weeks.

Six lawsuits have been filed claiming Trump’s order, issued as part of a flurry of immigration actions during his first day in office, violates the 14th Amendment and federal citizenship laws.

“There’s been a lot of litigation,” Justice Department attorney Brad Rosenberg joked as he attempted to recall all the cases at a Thursday teleconference for a Maryland suit, “so my apologies, Your Honor.”

Later in the day, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour became the first to block Trump’s restrictions, at the conclusion of a brief hearing in Seattle on four states’ challenge. Coughenour, an appointee of former President Reagan, agreed Trump’s order is likely unconstitutional.

"The harms are immediate, ongoing, and significant, and cannot be remediated in the ordinary course of litigation,” reads Coughenour’s ruling, which will remain in effect for 14 days.

When asked about the ruling in the Oval Office, Trump said the government "obviously" will appeal.

“They put it before a certain judge in Seattle, I guess, right? And there’s no surprises with that judge," Trump said.

Democratic state attorneys general and groups for pregnant mothers and immigration rights have now filed a total of six lawsuits against Trump’s order. They are set to crescendo in courtrooms across the country in a series of written briefings and hearings over the next roughly three weeks, before Trump’s order is scheduled to go into full effect on Feb. 19.

It would end birthright citizenship for children born to people living without legal status in the U.S., running contrary to how the Supreme Court has long interpreted the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.

Expectations are growing that the emerging legal battle will end up at the conservative-majority high court, which would then decide whether to revisit its long-standing precedent that only leaves narrow exceptions for when people born on U.S. soil aren’t entitled to birthright citizenship.

“We appreciate and wanted the challenges to this bill. We wanted the ACLU and these 22 states,” Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), who has introduced legislation to limit birthright citizenship, said at a Thursday press conference.

“Why? So we can get it into the Supreme Court of the United States,” he continued. “This thing could take up to three years before it winds up in the highest court.”

In the Seattle case, four Democratic-led states — Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington — have likened Trump’s effort to the Supreme Court’s now-disgraced 1857 decision that Black people were not citizens.

“President Trump and the federal government now seek to impose a modern version of Dred Scott,” the states wrote in court filings. “But 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.”

Their hearing in Seattle came just hours after a federal judge in Maryland convened a call to discuss scheduling in a separate lawsuit filed by five pregnant mothers without legal status and two immigrant rights nonprofits.

“Our plaintiffs are facing irreparable harm in the psychological harm that they have of not knowing the status of their children, children who will be born over the coming weeks and months,” Joseph Mead, special litigation counsel at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, which is representing the plaintiffs, said on Thursday’s call.

“And mothers today now have to fear that their children will not be given the U.S. citizenship that they are entitled to, but instead potentially rendered stateless,” Mead continued.

As plaintiffs in the cases press for immediate injunctions, the Justice Department has pushed back, stressing that courts have time before the thrust of Trump’s executive order would go into effect.

“We would ask for a bit more time in terms of preparing an opposition to plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction motion,” Rosenberg told the judge on the call.

Rosenberg, who is helping helm the government’s defense in the emerging battle, is a longtime civil litigator who has a history of defending the executive branch in high-profile litigation, like Trump’s efforts to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

“This is a case that raises significant issues,” Rosenberg said.

The judge ultimately set a hearing in the Maryland suit for Feb. 5. The next hearing in Seattle is set for the following day.

And beyond those cases, the government is also defending against four other lawsuits challenging the order.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit in federal court in New Hampshire, where U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 10.

Meanwhile, a coalition of 18 Democratic state attorneys general, the D.C. attorney general and San Francisco city attorney filed a challenge in Massachusetts’s federal district court.

Rosenberg said the parties were meeting later Thursday to discuss scheduling, but it had already been complicated by yet another challenge to Trump’s order in the same court.

That case was filed on behalf of an anonymous expectant mother and two nonprofits by Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based group that previously gained attention for suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (D) for flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

“We refuse to let the federal government create a caste system that dehumanizes U.S.-born children and their families,” the group wrote on the social platform X.

And finally, a sixth challenge against Trump’s order has been filed in California by a Thien Le, a visa holder from Vietnam who is 33 weeks pregnant.

Attorney Vy Nguyen, who is representing Le pro bono, said in an email that the complaint was “poorly drafted in one hour” and the judge was planning to consider the request for an injunction without a hearing.

“I am just trying to do some justice out of the frustration against the new president's unconstitutional executive order. I know that this legal attempt would be nothing in comparison to other lawsuits filed by large civil organizations and U.S. states,” Nguyen wrote.

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