President Donald Trump - Photo by AFP
SEATTLE, Jan 23 (Reuters) – A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing an executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour at the urging of four Democratic-led states issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing the order, which the Republican president signed on Monday during his first day in office.
Trump in his executive order directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither their mother nor father is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.
“I am having trouble understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this order is constitutional,” the judge told a U.S. Justice Department lawyer defending Trump’s order. “It just boggles my mind.”
The states – Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon – argued that Trump’s order violated the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
“This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” the judge said. Before Justice Department attorney Brett Shumate had even finished talking, Coughenour said he had signed a temporary restraining order sought by Democratic state attorneys general from the states.
More than 150,000 newborn children would be denied citizenship annually if Trump’s order is allowed to stand, according to the Democratic-led states. Several other lawsuits are also pending nationwide by civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states, who call it a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution. The expectation is that the legal battle will end up before the Supreme Court at some point this year.
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