The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Maine and a half-dozen other organizations in defense of birthright citizenship.
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending automatic citizenship for any child born on U.S. soil whose parents are undocumented immigrants or who have temporary immigration status. In so doing, Trump sought to upend a landmark constitutional right that has been in place for well over a century and that still applies to an estimated 200,000-plus babies born in the U.S. to noncitizens each year.
Trump's order was never enforced because of multiple legal challenges. And on Friday, the nation's highest court announced that it would hear oral arguments on a class-action lawsuit filed in June by the national ACLU and its state chapters in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The organizations Legal Defense Fund, Asian Law Caucus and Democracy Defenders Fund are also parties to the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of children that would be affected by the elimination of birthright citizenship.
“The 14th Amendment is clear: babies born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens,” Molly Curren Rowles, executive director of ACLU of Maine, said in a statement. “The president’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship has been blocked in federal courts across the country. We look forward to the Supreme Court stopping this attempt to upend the basic American principle of birthright citizenship. We hope a decision in this critically important case can bring stability at a time when immigrant families across the country face increasing hostility, threats, harm, and uncertainty."
The case, Trump v. Barbara, comes at a time when the Trump administration is detaining and deporting large numbers of undocumented immigrants. The case hinges on the meaning of the clause of the 14th Amendment that reads: "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 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that a man born in San Francisco was a U.S. citizen even though his parents were noncitizens from China. But the Trump administration argues that those protections were only intended for newly freed slaves and their children after the Civil War.
"The erroneous extension of birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens has caused substantial harm to the United States," Trump's legal team wrote in their request that the Supreme Court review the case. "Most obviously, it has impaired the United States’ territorial integrity by creating a strong incentive for illegal immigration."
It was not immediately clear when the court will hear arguments in the case.
