(The Center Square) — A federal judge in New Hampshire has again blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship and expanded the injunction nationwide.
The bench ruling Thursday by U.S. District Court judge Joseph Laplante sides with immigration advocates seeking to certify plaintiffs facing a loss of citizenship as a class-action lawsuit, and set a preliminary injunction indefinitely blocking Trump’s order from being enforced against born and unborn babies. The ruling does not include parents.
Laplante, who was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, was expected to issue a written ruling later Thursday. He would stay the ruling for a week to give the Trump administration time to appeal.
The ruling came despite a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that district court judges can’t issue nationwide injunctions unless the plaintiffs in the case had been certified as a nationwide class. Justices didn’t rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship. The executive order is set to go into effect on July 27 under the high court’s decision.
A Supreme Court ruling more than a century ago held that children born in the U.S. to foreign parents are U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment. But the Trump administration claims the 14th Amendment has “never been interpreted” to give universal citizenship to everyone born in the country.
Trump’s executive order, signed during his first day in office in January, directs federal agencies to refuse to recognize U.S. citizenship for children born in the U.S. to mothers who are in the country illegally or here legally on visas, if the father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order denies U.S. citizenship to those children born in the U.S., if at least one parent isn’t an American citizen or green card holder, according to the Trump administration.
The lawsuit, one of dozens challenging Trump’s order, was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union’s chapters in Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire on behalf of an unidentified woman from Honduras who has a pending asylum application and is due to give birth to her fourth child and and a man from Brazil whose U.S. citizen wife gave birth to their first child earlier this year.
The ACLU argues that Trump doesn’t have the authority to end birthright citizenship and is “flouting the Constitution’s dictates, congressional intent, and long standing Supreme Court precedent.”
“Neither the Constitution nor any federal statute confers any authority on the President to redefine American citizenship,” the ACLU’s lawyers wrote in the 17-page complaint. “By attempting to limit the right to birthright citizenship, the Order exceeds the President’s authority and runs afoul of the Constitution and federal statute.”
