Judge in Seattle blocks Trump order on birthright citizenship nationwide

A federal judge in Seattle blocked, temporarily, President Donald Trump's attempt to rescind birthright citizenship — the idea spelled out in the Constitution that every person born in the United States is an American citizen.

Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour on Thursday was blistering in his criticism of Trump's action as he granted a temporary restraining order that blocks Trump's executive order from taking effect nationwide.

"I've been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order," Coughenour, an appointee of Ronald Reagan, said from the bench. "There are other times in world history where we look back and people of goodwill can say where were the judges, where were the lawyers?"

Coughenour, speaking to a standing-room-only courtroom in downtown Seattle, interrupted before Brett Shumate, a Justice Department attorney, could even complete his first sentence.

"In your opinion is this executive order constitutional?" he asked.

Said Shumate, "It absolutely is."

"Frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order," Coughenour said. "It just boggles my mind."

The executive order will remain blocked for at least 14 days while lawsuits in Washington and elsewhere proceed. Washington will next seek a preliminary injunction from Coughenour, which would continue to block the executive order as cases move along.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown sued Trump and his administration Tuesday, the day after the president issued his executive order ending birthright citizenship. Brown, at a news conference Tuesday, called the order an "unconstitutional, un-American and cruel ... attempt to redefine what it means to be an American."

Coughenour's ruling is the first after a flurry of lawsuits was filed this week across the country attempting to block the executive order. Washington was joined in its lawsuit by Oregon, Illinois and Arizona. Eighteen other states filed a similar lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts and several immigrant rights groups have sued the administration in federal court in New Hampshire.

His ruling also was reminiscent of the earliest days of Trump's first presidency, when a federal judge in Seattle blocked Trump's executive order banning travel from a group of seven predominantly Muslim countries. That ruling was appealed, but courts ultimately blocked the order and a subsequent one, before the Supreme Court allowed a third, slightly narrower, order to take effect.

More than a century of legal precedent has recognized the Constitution's 14th Amendment as granting U.S. citizenship to every person born here.

The 14th Amendment begins: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

Birthright citizenship, part of the Reconstruction Amendments adopted at the end of the Civil War, Brown wrote in the lawsuit, "emerged out of one of our Nation's darkest chapters and embodies one of its most solemn promises."

"President Trump and the federal government now seek to impose a modern version of Dred Scott," Brown wrote, citing the overturned Supreme Court case that denied citizenship to enslaved people and their children.

After the court hearing, Brown said Coughenour's comments reinforced that "no one individual, not even the president of the United States can simply erase what it means to amend the Constitution."

"We came to the courthouse today to defend the United States Constitution, to defend democracy in America and to defend what it means to be an American citizen," Brown told a swarm of reporters and cameras outside the courthouse. "We are thrilled that the court saw the seriousness and the urgency of the complaint."

Trump's executive order says the government would not issue documents such as passports to children if their parents are not citizens or permanent residents and if their mother was in the country illegally, or even if she was here legally but only temporarily.

The order, Brown said in court filings, would deprive around 150,000 babies a year nationally, 4,000 in Washington, of citizenship.

"Births cannot be paused while the court considers this state's case. Babies down the street at Harborview are likely being born today while a cloud hangs over their citizenship status," Lane Polozola, an assistant attorney general in Brown's office, told Coughenour on Thursday morning. "They will be deprived of their right to participate fully in our democratic system."

The executive order argues that the 14th Amendment "has always" excluded people whose parents are in the country illegally, because they are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States.

The Trump administration, in legal filings, argued that the states did not have standing to sue, because they are not the ones that would lose citizenship. They accused Brown of "overheated rhetoric" and argued that the 14th Amendment has never guaranteed citizenship.

"Birth in the United States does not by itself entitle a person to citizenship," Justice Department lawyers wrote. "Ample historical evidence shows that the children of non-resident aliens are subject to foreign powers — and, thus, are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and are not constitutionally entitled to birthright citizenship."

That argument, Brown argued in court filings, makes little sense.

The children of undocumented immigrants pay taxes, register for the selective service and can be sued, arrested and charged with crimes.

"They must comply with U.S. law; so too must their parents," Brown wrote.

The only people born in the U.S. who are not subject to the jurisdiction of the country, Brown wrote, are children of diplomats and children born to foreign armies at war against the U.S. on U.S. soil.

Trump, in the Oval Office on Thursday, said "Obviously we'll appeal."

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