Washington — A federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked President Trump’s new executive order that seeks to eliminate birthright citizenship.
U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour said during a hearing in a challenge to Mr. Trump’s order that it is “blatantly unconstitutional,” and said he will grant the request for a temporary restraining order sought by four Democrat-led states: Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon.
The order will remain in place while legal proceedings continue and is an early blow to the unilateral efforts undertaken by Mr. Trump to crack down on immigration, which he promised to do on the campaign trail and began to pursue almost immediately after he was sworn in for a second term Monday.
The president’s order targeting birthright citizenship was among a wave of executive actions he signed just after his inauguration. The order directs federal agencies to stop issuing citizenship documents such as passports to children born on U.S. soil to parents in the country illegally or under temporary visas.
Mr. Trump’s move was swiftly challenged by the four states and a separate group of 18 others, as well as advocacy groups.
Coughenour was the first to convene a hearing, during which he considered the request from the four states to temporarily block implementation of the order. The judge, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1991, said he would have a difficult time imagining members of the bar finding Mr. Trump’s order to be constitutional.
Citing his four decades on the bench, Coughenour said he “can’t remember” a case that presented a question “as clear as this.”
The four states argued Mr. Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship violates the 14th Amendment, which states that “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.”
“Through the order, babies being born today aren’t considered American citizens anymore,” Lane Polozola, a lawyer representing Washington state, argued during the hearing, adding that hundreds of thousands of children across the country will be impacted by Mr. Trump’s action.
Polozola said the removal of birthright citizenship is “off limits.”
But Brett Shumate, a Justice Department lawyer who defended the order, said it would be “wildly inappropriate and premature” to grant a temporary restraining order at this moment that blocks implementation of the measure. He predicted that the challenge to Mr. Trump’s measure will eventually wind up before the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority.
