PHILADELPHIA — Attorneys general from 22 states sued President Donald Trump on Tuesday to block an executive order that refuses to recognize the U.S.-born children of immigrants who entered the country illegally as citizens, the opening salvo in what promises to be a long legal battle over the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, was joined by the cities of San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

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New Jersey, California and Massachusetts Lead the Charge

The states view Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship as “extraordinary and extreme,” said New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin, who led the legal effort along with the attorneys general from California and Massachusetts. “Presidents are powerful, but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.”

On Monday, in the opening hours of his second term as president, Trump signed an order declaring that future children born to immigrants without permanent legal status would no longer be treated as citizens. The order would extend even to the children of some mothers in the country legally but temporarily, such as foreign students or tourists.

Trump’s executive order asserts that the children of such noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and thus aren’t covered by the 14th Amendment’s long-standing constitutional guarantee.

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14th Amendment Guarantees Citizenship to Babies Born in the US

The order flew in the face of more than 100 years of legal precedent, when the courts and the executive branch interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing citizenship to every baby born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ legal status. The courts recognized only a narrow exception for the children of accredited diplomats.

But there are signs the judiciary could be divided on the issue. Judge James C. Ho, who Trump nominated to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has been more sympathetic to some of Trump’s arguments, likening immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally to an invading army. That comparison has also been made by lawyers for the state of Texas and another declaration by Trump that illegal crossings at the southern border amount to an “ongoing invasion.”

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Still, that appeals court does not hear cases originating in Massachusetts, and other courts are unlikely to even consider the Trump administration’s arguments about constitutional interpretation without a new law from Congress, said Gerard Magliocca, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He cited recent cases in which the Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch can’t single-handedly address the biggest political controversies, known as “major questions.”

“If that’s true of student loans or COVID-19 rules or whatever, you’d think it would be true of citizenship as well,” he said. “The states are right, and the courts are probably going to agree with them.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Mattahias Schwartz/Doug Mills
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