The Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) at Georgetown Law has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration’s executive order ending birthright citizenship.
The executive order, titled, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” mandates infants born in the U.S. no longer be issued legal citizenship documents if their mother was unlawfully present or only temporarily lawfully present in the country, and their father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of their birth.
What does the lawsuit claim?
ICAP filed the lawsuit on behalf of a group of five pregnant immigrant mothers, alongside two organizations that specialize in immigrant advocacy, all of whom claim President Trump’s order violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit fear that their children will not receive health care or education in the United States; others are concerned that their children could be denied U.S. citizenship, removed from their parents, and deported without them.
How has the Trump administration responded?
The Trump administration, however, has argued that birthright citizenship itself is “unconstitutional.” Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the administration, explained in her first White House press briefing, “This administration believes that birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, and that is why President Trump signed that executive order.”
“Illegal immigrants who come to this country and have a child are not subject to the laws of this jurisdiction. That’s the opinion of this administration,” Leavitt concluded.
What is birthright citizenship?
The question of birthright citizenship centers on differing interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment, which begins by reading, “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.”
Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, following the end of the Civil War, with the intentions of eradicating legal disparities between white and black Americans. This amendment offered citizenship to formerly enslaved individuals and required all states to extend the rights of due process and equal protection of the law to all Americans citizens.
The concept of birthright citizenship is derived from the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states in part:
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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Those arguing in favor of birthright citizenship assert that any individual born on American soil is automatically granted American citizenship, regardless of his or her parents’ legal status in the country.
The Trump Administration’s executive order, however, argues, “the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
Irony? Pro-abortion ACLU offers concern for “expectant couples”
ICAP is not the only legal organization to share its opinion on the termination of birthright citizenship and subsequent lawsuits. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a legal advocacy group that focuses on issues such as “immigrant rights,” “trans justice,” and “reproductive freedom,” has spoken out about the executive order.
In a press release, ACLU staff vocalized their concerns for “expectant couples” across the country who are unsure what the future holds for their children who have not yet been born.
“This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans,” stated Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “We will not let this attack on newborns and future generations of Americans go unchallenged.”
The ACLU is a historically pro-abortion organization that recently opposed federal legislation known as the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.” This legislation seeks to protect the rights of newborn children who survive attempted abortions. In that instance, the ACLU chose to characterize the defense of newborns as an “inappropriate and harmful” form of “political intrusion.”
Similarly, pro-abortion ideologues take offense to the notion that the Fourteenth Amendment, at issue in this lawsuit, offers constitutional protections for preborn human beings from abortion. Last year, New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie argued that it is “perverse for the anti-abortion movement to use the 14th Amendment as a cudgel against bodily autonomy in the name of so-called fetal rights.” Yet, as Live Action News previously reported:
Interpretations of the 14th Amendment — such as wording from when it was ratified, historic state practices related to abortion, and the framer’s understanding of the amendment — overwhelmingly show that preborn children are human beings with an inherent right to basic legal rights and equal protection under the law.
Furthermore, at the time the 14th Amendment was enacted, virtually every state understood and accepted that the legal phrase “person” included preborn life…
Lawyer and writer Josh Craddock stated in a video for Live Action, “Legalized abortion discriminates against preborn children because it means our general laws against homicide don’t apply when the victim is an unborn child. And those are precisely the sort of wrongs that the 14th Amendment was designed to dissolve.”
Trump administration does not plan to back down
Though the Trump administration continues to receive immense pressure to rescind the executive order on birthright citizenship, the newly inaugurated President has indicated no interest in doing so.
In addition to the lawsuit filed by pregnant immigrant mothers, the birthright citizenship order is being challenged by the Attorneys General of 22 Democratic-led states, as well as the ACLU.
In response to the executive order’s legal challenges, a representative of the Department of Justice stated that it “will vigorously defend President Trump’s EO, which correctly interprets the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We look forward to presenting a full merits argument to the Court and to the American people.”
