ATTORNEY GENERAL LOPEZ CHALLENGES UNCONSTITUTIONAL ORDER PURPORTING TO END BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
As President Trump Issues Executive Order Purporting to End Birthright Citizenship, Hawaiʻi and 17 Other States and the District of Columbia File Suit to Defend Basic Constitutional Rights for All Americans
News-Release from Office of the Attorney General, 2025-06 January 21, 2025
HONOLULU – Attorney General Anne Lopez today announced that she and 18 other attorneys general are challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship, which violates the constitutional rights to which all children born in the United States of America are entitled.
“The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states in its first words that all persons born in the United States are citizens of this nation. These words could not be clearer,” said Attorney General Lopez. “Under our governmental system, the words of the U.S. Constitution are inviolable, and as the Attorney General of Hawaiʻi, I will defend the rule of law.”
“Hawaiʻi is on the side of the Constitution and seeks only to enforce its plain words,” said Special Assistant to the Attorney General Dave Day and Solicitor General Kalikoʻonālani Fernandes, who are leading the state’s efforts in this matter. “The Department of the Attorney General will stand for the rights of all of its residents.”
President Trump yesterday issued an executive order fulfilling his repeated promise to end birthright citizenship, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Section 1401 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
To stop the President’s unlawful action, which violates the Constitution and will harm hundreds of thousands of American children, Attorney General Lopez is filing suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, seeking to invalidate the executive order and to enjoin any actions taken to implement it. The attorneys general request immediate relief to prevent the President’s Order from taking effect through both a Temporary Restraining Order and a Preliminary Injunction.
As the Attorney General’s filing today explains, birthright citizenship dates back centuries—including to pre-Civil War America. Although the Supreme Court’s notorious decision in Dred Scott denied birthright citizenship to the descendants of slaves, the post-Civil War United States adopted the Fourteenth Amendment to protect citizenship for children born in the country. As the Attorney General’s filing also explains, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld birthright citizenship, regardless of the immigration status of the baby’s parents.
If allowed to stand, this Executive Order—for the first time since the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868—would mean that babies born in Hawaiʻi who would have been citizens would no longer enjoy the privileges and benefits of citizenship.
The individuals who stand to be stripped of their United States citizenship would lose their most basic rights, and will be forced to live under the threat of deportation. These individuals would lose eligibility for a wide range of federal benefits programs. They would lose their ability obtain a Social Security number and, as they age, to work lawfully. And they would lose their right to vote, serve on juries, and run for certain offices. Despite the Constitution’s guarantee of citizenship, thousands of children would—for the first time—lose their ability to fully and fairly be a part of American society as a citizen with all its duties, benefits, and privileges.
In addition to harming hundreds of thousands of residents, the states’ filing explains that President Trump’s order significantly harms the states themselves too. Among other things, this Order will cause the states to lose federal funding to programs that they administer, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and foster care and adoption assistance programs, which all turn at least in part on the immigration status of the resident being served. States will also be required—on no notice and at its considerable expense—to immediately begin modifying their operation and administration of benefits programs to account for this change, which will require significant burdens for multiple agencies that operate programs for the benefit of the States’ residents. The Attorney Generals’ filing explains that they should not have to bear these dramatic costs while their case proceeds because the Order is directly inconsistent with the Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
States joining Hawaiʻi in today’s filing include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin, along with the District of Columbia and the City & County of San Francisco.
* * * * *
‘Flagrantly unlawful’: 18 states sue over Trump executive order to end birthright citizenship
The multi-state coalition filed the complaint in federal court in Massachusetts.
by Erik Uebelacker, Court House News, January 21, 2025
(CN) — President Donald Trump’s controversial Day 1 executive order to end birthright citizenship in the United States is already causing legal uproar after 18 states, the District of Columbia and the city and county of San Francisco filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the order.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration on Monday, he signed an executive order that aims to narrow birthright citizenship to people who have one or more parents who are already U.S. citizens.
It’s a move that the multi-state coalition called “a flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands [of] American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”
“President Trump now seeks to abrogate this well-established and longstanding constitutional principle by executive fiat,” the coalition claims in the lawsuit. “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.”
The 50-page complaint was filed in federal court in Massachusetts. Three Democratic state attorneys general co-led the lawsuit: Matthew Platkin of New Jersey, Rob Bonta of California and Andrea Campbell of Massachusetts.
“Birthright citizenship in our country is a guarantee of equality, born out of a collective fight against oppression, slavery and its devastating harms,” Campbell said in a statement announcing the complaint. “It is a settled right in our Constitution and recognized by the Supreme Court for more than a century. President Trump does not have the authority to take away constitutional rights, and we will fight against his effort to overturn our Constitution and punish innocent babies born in Massachusetts.”
In joining the lawsuit, New York Attorney General Letitia James called Trump’s executive order “not just unconstitutional,” but “profoundly dangerous.”
“This fundamental right to birthright citizenship, rooted in the 14th Amendment and born from the ashes of slavery, is a cornerstone of our nation’s commitment to justice,” James said in a statement. “Our Constitution is not open to reinterpretation by executive order or presidential decree.”
The attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin also make up the coalition.
Attorneys general in Arizona, Washington state, Oregon and Illinois formed their own coalition to sue Trump on Tuesday on the same grounds in the Western District of Washington. They claim that hundreds of thousands of children nationally will be stripped of their citizenship under Trump’s order, leaving them with no immigration status and burdening the states.
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War to establish citizenship for Black Americans post-slavery. It mandates that anyone “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.”
It’s been the longstanding interpretation of the amendment that birthright citizenship extends to those born in the U.S. to parents who are not citizens. Trump’s executive order rejects that interpretation.
“The 14th Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” Trump proclaimed in his order. “The 14th Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
The coalition of attorneys general argue in their lawsuit that Trump’s interpretation defies decades of legal precedent from multiple branches of government that found otherwise.
“The executive branch has embraced this understanding of the citizenship clause for more than a century,” the coalition claims. “Indeed, in 1995, the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) provided a statement to Congress opining that proposed legislation that would deny citizenship to certain children born in the United States based on their parents’ immigration or citizenship status would be ‘unquestionably unconstitutional.’”
A spokesperson for Trump’s transition team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
If upheld, Trump’s executive order wouldn’t just strip citizenship rights from the children of undocumented immigrants. It could also impact those born to parents who are in the United States legally on a temporary basis, like those on student or H-1B visas.
Numerous civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have filed federal lawsuits of their own in Massachusetts and other jurisdictions challenging Trump’s order.
“This order, entitled ‘Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,’ is an attack on a fundamental constitutional protection, and one that is central to equality and inclusion,” the ACLU said in a statement on Tuesday. “Every attack on birthright citizenship, from the 19th century until now, has been grounded in racism.”
The executive order was one of more than 40 that Trump signed on the first day of his presidency.
* * * * *
SA: Off the news: Hawaii AG aids fight on citizenship order | Honolulu Star-Advertiser
KHON: Hawaiʻi AG, 18 others file against Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship | KHON2
TGI: States challenge Trump order seeking to end birthright citizenship - The Garden Island