San Francisco, CA – Attorney General Rob Bonta on Tuesday filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s unconstitutional executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. Under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, all children born on U.S. soil are automatically granted U.S. citizenship and the rights and privileges that come with it.
18 state attorneys general – led by California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts – argue that President Trump’s unprecedented executive order violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Section 1401 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and should be immediately blocked from going into effect while litigation proceeds.
“The President’s executive order attempting to rescind birthright citizenship is blatantly unconstitutional and quite frankly, un-American,” said Attorney General Bonta.
He added, “As home of Wong Kim Ark, a San Francisco native who fought – successfully – to have his U.S. citizenship recognized, California condemns the President’s attempts to erase history and ignore 125 years of Supreme Court precedent. We are asking a court to immediately block this order from taking effect and ensure that the rights of American-born children impacted by this order remain in effect while litigation proceeds. The President has overstepped his authority by a mile with this order, and we will hold him accountable.”
Here’s an excerpt from the complaint filed on Tuesday (full link here).
President Trump’s public statements make clear that he wishes to end birthright citizenship purely as a policy tactic to purportedly deter immigration to the United States. Despite a President’s broad powers to set immigration policy, however, the Citizenship Stripping Order falls far outside the legal bounds of the President’s authority.
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(The) Plaintiffs bring this action to protect their states, localities, and residents from the President’s flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.
The principle of birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment unambiguously and expressly confers citizenship on “[a]ll persons born” in and “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. More than 125 years ago, the Supreme Court confirmed that this entitles a child born in the United States to noncitizen parents to automatic citizenship.
Congress subsequently codified that understanding in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
And the Executive Branch has long recognized that any attempt to deny citizenship to children based on their parents’ citizenship or immigration status would be “unquestionably unconstitutional.”
President Trump now seeks to abrogate this well-established and longstanding Constitutional principle by executive fiat. Just hours after taking office, he signed an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, which declares that birthright citizenship does not extend to any child born in the United States to a mother who is unlawfully present or lawfully present on a temporary basis and a father who is neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident.
On the basis of this unlawful declaration, the President prescribes that the federal government shall not issue or recognize any document recognizing citizenship for any such child born after February 19, 2025. The President has no authority to rewrite or nullify a constitutional amendment or duly enacted statute. Nor is he empowered by any other source of law to limit who receives United States citizenship at birth.
If this unprecedented executive action is allowed to stand, both Plaintiffs and their residents will suffer immediate and irreparable harm. Every year, thousands of children are born in Plaintiffs’ jurisdictions to parents who lack legal status or have a lawful status on a temporary basis. Under the Order, such children born after February 19, 2025—who would have been unquestionably deemed citizens had they been born two days ago—will lack any legal status in the eyes of the federal government.
They will all be deportable, and many will be stateless. They will lose the ability to access myriad federal services that are available to their fellow Americans. And despite the Constitution’s guarantee of their citizenship, they will lose their rights to participate in the economic and civic life of their own country—to work, vote, serve on juries, and run for certain offices.
The Order will also cut federal funding on which Plaintiff States rely to provide essential services to the most vulnerable children living within their borders: basic healthcare access for low-income children, foster care services for neglected and abused kids, and early interventions for infants, toddlers, and students with disabilities.
Plaintiffs will also be required— on no notice and at considerable expense—to immediately begin modifying their administration of benefits programs to account for this change.
The Court should declare that the policy announced by the Order is unlawful and enjoin any actions taken to implement it.
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