A federal judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order seeking to unilaterally redefine the 14th Amendment and federal law by denying citizenship to certain American-born children of immigrants.
District Judge John Coughenour, presiding over a lawsuit brought by several states seeking to overturn Trump’s order, delivered a blistering criticism of the president’s “blatantly unconstitutional” action from the bench in a Seattle courtroom on Thursday.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” said the Ronald Reagan appointee, according to The Seattle Times.
“There are other times in world history where we look back and people of goodwill can say where were the judges, where were the lawyers?” he said.
“Frankly I have difficulty understanding how a member of the Bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order,” Coughenour continued. “It just boggles my mind.”
The judge is expected to issue a written ruling to grant a temporary restraining order that will block Trump’s order from taking effect next month while the case brought by Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington plays out in court.
“This unconstitutional and un-American executive order will hopefully never take effect thanks to the actions states are taking on behalf of their residents,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement.
“Birthright citizenship makes clear that citizenship cannot be conditioned on one’s race, ethnicity or where their parents came from,” he added. “It’s the law of our nation, recognized by generations of jurists, lawmakers, and presidents, until President Trump’s illegal action. That’s why we’ve stepped in to protect Washingtonians from harm.”
The lawsuit is one of at least five legal challenges playing out in federal courts across the country.
Eighteen state attorneys general and officials in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco are also suing the Trump administration to block what they have called the “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”
Several pregnant women and immigrant advocacy groups representing families and expecting mothers have also launched lawsuits to overturn the order.
Under the sweeping terms of Trump’s order, children born in the United States after February 17 can be denied citizenship “when that person’s mother was unlawfully present” or “lawful but temporary,” and if the father “was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause plainly states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
In the Trump administration’s first court filing responding to the case in Seattle, Justice Department lawyers called the executive order an “integral part of President Trump’s recent actions, pursuant to his significant authority in the immigration field, to address this nation’s broken immigration.”
