NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump has been sued by a coalition of Democratic-leaning states and civil rights groups over his plan to end birthright citizenship in the United States. Several separate lawsuits came within hours after Trump took office and quickly unveiled a phalanx of executive orders he hopes will reshape American immigration.
The first two cases were filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, immigrant organizations and an expectant mother in the hours after Trump signed the executive order, kicking off the first major court fight of his administration.
The two other lawsuits were brought by 22 Democratic-led states along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco, in federal courts in Boston and Seattle. The cases asserted that the President had overstepped his authority and violated the US Constitution by trying to eliminate the automatic granting of citizenship to anyone born on US soil.
If allowed to stand, Trump's order would for the first time deny more than 150,000 children born annually in the United States the right to citizenship, said the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell.
"President Trump does not have the authority to take away constitutional rights," she said in a statement.
Anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, which derives from the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment which was added to the US Constitution in 1868.
The amendment states: "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." The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 also defines citizens and includes similar language.
Donald Trump's order declared that individuals born in the United States are not entitled to automatic citizenship if the mother was in the country unlawfully and the father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
It also declared citizenship would be denied to those whose mother was in the United States lawfully but temporarily, such as those on student or tourist visas, and whose father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Trump has complained about foreign women visiting the United States for the purpose of giving birth and conferring US citizenship on their offspring.
There were an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in America in January 2022, according to a US Department of Homeland Security estimate, a figure that some analysts now place at 13 million to 14 million. Their US-born children are considered by the government to have US citizenship.
Losing out on citizenship would prevent these individuals from having access to federal programs like Medicaid health insurance and, when they become older, from working lawfully or voting, the states said in the lawsuits.
According to legal experts, birthright citizenship can not be ended by an executive order as it is bound to end up in litigation.
"He's doing something that's going to upset a lot of people, but ultimately this will be decided by the courts... This is not something he can decide on his own," Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional expert and University of Virginia Law School professor told the BBC.
Prakash noted that while Trump can order employees of federal agencies to interpret citizenship more narrowly, it would trigger legal challenges from anyone whose citizenship is denied. This could lead to a lengthy court battle ultimately winding up at the US Supreme Court.
A constitutional amendment could do away with birthright citizenship, but that would also require a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and approval by three-quarters of US states.
Republicans have a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate and a 220 to 215 majority in the House, meaning America's grand old party (GOP) does not have the required number in either chamber.
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