By Blake Brittain, Nate Raymond
GREENBELT, Maryland (Reuters) -A second federal judge has issued an order blocking Donald Trump’s administration from implementing his plan to curtail U.S. birthright citizenship, saying no court in the United States has ever endorsed the Republican president’s interpretation of the Constitution.
During a hearing on Wednesday in Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman sided with two immigrant rights groups and five pregnant women who argued that their children were at risk of being denied U.S. citizenship based on the immigration status of their parents in violation of the Constitution.
Boardman, an appointee of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s order from going into effect as planned on Feb. 19 while the matter is litigated.
“Today, virtually every baby born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen upon birth,” Boardman said. “That is the law and tradition of our country. That law and tradition are and will remain the status quo pending the resolution of this case.”
A U.S. Justice Department lawyer asked Boardman for 60 days to respond to the injunction, but did not say whether the Trump administration would appeal.
Boardman’s order provides longer-term relief to opponents of Trump’s policy than an earlier, 14-day pause imposed on Jan. 23 by a Seattle-based federal judge.
That judge, John Coughenour, called Trump’s order “blatantly unconstitutional.” Coughenour is set on Thursday to consider whether to likewise issue a preliminary injunction that would remain in effect pending the resolution of the litigation.
Trump’s executive order, signed on his first day back in office on Jan. 20, had directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither their mother nor father is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. It is part of Trump’s hardline policies toward immigration that he has pursued since returning to power.
Lawyers for the immigrant rights groups CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project that brought the case before Boardman have argued that Trump’s order violates the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
Boardman said at the hearing that Trump’s interpretation of the Constitution has been “resoundingly rejected” by the Supreme Court in the past.
“In fact, no court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation,” Boardman said. “This court will not be the first.”
The Maryland lawsuit is one of at least eight filed around the United States by Democratic state attorneys general, immigrants rights advocates and expectant mothers challenging Trump’s order.
Under Trump’s order, any children born in the United States after Feb. 19 whose mother and father are not American citizens or lawful permanent residents would be subject to deportation and would be prevented from obtaining Social Security numbers, various government benefits and the ability to work lawfully when they get older.
‘REAL-WORLD HARM’
More than 150,000 newborn children would be denied citizenship annually if Trump’s order is allowed to stand, according to Democratic state attorneys general from 22 states who have sued to block the policy in the case in Seattle and another one in Boston federal court.
Joseph Mead, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the Maryland case, said that Trump’s order is causing “real-world harm for countless people today” because citizenship is “the foundation for so many other rights.”
Opponents of Trump’s order have said the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause’s meaning was cemented 127 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to American citizenship.
But Trump’s Justice Department has said prior presidential administrations have misread the clause in the 14th Amendment, and that its text and history make clear that the Constitution does not grant birthright citizenship to children of immigrants whose presence in the country is either illegal or temporary.
The department argues that when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 1898 decision in the case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, its holding was more narrow that Trump’s critics contend and was limited only to children whose parents had a “permanent domicile and residence in the United States.”
“Illegal aliens are not permitted to be in the U.S. at all,” Justice Department attorney Eric Hamilton said.
But Boardman said that Trump’s order “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year-old binding Supreme Court precedent and runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.”
The Maryland case was one of four scheduled to have hearings between Wednesday and Monday on separate requests by plaintiffs to block enforcement of Trump’s order before the Feb. 19 deadline.
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham and Alexia Garamfalvi)
