WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union has petitioned a federal court in New Hampshire to reaffirm a ruling that found President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order unconstitutional, after the president renewed his attempts to redefine American citizenship despite his loss at the Supreme Court.
“This case has always been, and remains, about the President’s effort to fashion new exceptions to birthright citizenship,” according to the ACLU’s Tuesday filing.
Trump last week signed two executive orders. One seeks to expand the narrow exemptions to birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil. Another aims to end birth tourism, which is a term for the practice of foreign nationals traveling to the United States only for the purpose of giving birth in order to obtain citizenship for the baby.
The ACLU filing noted the Supreme Court’s ruling has settled the matter of birthright citizenship, after the justices found the president’s order violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“This new Order violates the Court’s existing preliminary injunction, as it purports to strip birthright citizenship from members of the provisionally certified class despite the Supreme Court’s recent decision,” according to the ACLU brief.
“To avoid any doubt in this regard, the Court should underscore that the government may not strip away class members’ citizenship through any executive orders or other similarly flawed assertions of Executive power over birthright citizenship.”
The White House did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
The ACLU is asking federal Judge Joseph N. Laplante to either “clarify the preliminary injunction or, in the alternative, modify or issue a new preliminary injunction.”
Laplante was nominated by former President George W. Bush.
The groups who sued the Trump administration include: the ACLU, ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of Maine, ACLU of Massachusetts, Legal Defense Fund, Asian Law Caucus and Democracy Defenders Fund.
“President Trump may not like the fact that birthright citizenship is a constitutional right, and he may not like that he lost in the Supreme Court, but that is really beside the point,” Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead counsel, said in a statement. “It’s well past time for these illegal and cruel attacks on children’s citizenship to end.”
Wofsy led the ACLU’s legal team in the birthright citizenship argument, from the federal courts to the Supreme Court.
The recent executive order that Trump signed aims to deny citizenship to children born to parents who belong to groups that have been designated as terrorist organizations; children born to foreign diplomatic staff; and children born in U.S. territories where Congress has not passed a law granting citizenship, which is only American Samoa.
The children of diplomats are already exempt from birthright citizenship — one of the few carve-outs — but the executive order aims to expand that exemption to include the children of noncitizen staff who work on behalf of a foreign government, such as an embassy.
Birthright citizenship has been a longstanding core principle in the United States, in which nearly any child — regardless of their parents’ immigration status — born on U.S. soil is automatically granted citizenship.
“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,” according to the clause in the 14th Amendment.
