Attorneys general from 22 states sued President Trump in two federal district courts on Tuesday to block an executive order that refuses to recognize the U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants as citizens, the opening salvo in what promises to be a long legal battle over the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Eighteen states and two cities, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., challenged the order in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, arguing that birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment is “automatic” and that neither the president nor Congress has the constitutional authority to revise it. Four other states filed a second lawsuit in the Western District of Washington….
“It’s so outlandish that it’s almost assured to be struck down,” predicted Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School, who expressed shock at the order’s breadth. Even someone like former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother was a foreign student when she was born, might be impacted in the future. “The person who drafted this order was not doing Donald Trump any favors.”…
There are signs the judiciary could be divided on the issue. Judge James C. Ho, whom Mr. Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, has been more sympathetic to some of Mr. Trump’s arguments, likening unauthorized immigrants to an invading army. That comparison has also been made by lawyers for the State of Texas and another declaration by Mr. Trump that illegal crossings at the southern border amount to an “ongoing invasion.”
Still, that appeals court does not hear cases originating in Massachusetts, and other courts are unlikely to even consider the Trump administration’s arguments about constitutional interpretation without a new law from Congress, said Gerard Magliocca, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He cited recent cases where the Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch can’t single-handedly address the biggest political controversies, known as “major questions.”
“If that’s true of student loans or Covid-19 rules or whatever, you’d think it would be true of citizenship as well,” he said. “The states are right and the courts are probably going to agree with them.”…