Groups File Nationwide Class Action Lawsuit Over Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order
WASHINGTON — Immigrants rights’ advocates on Friday filed a nationwide class action lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship, just hours after the Supreme Court partially blocked nationwide injunctions challenging Trump’s order.
The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Legal Defense Fund and other groups, was brought on behalf of a class of babies subject to the executive order, along with their parents. It charges the Trump administration with flouting the Constitution, congressional intent, and longstanding Supreme Court precedent.
It is also a direct response to the Supreme Court’s decision earlier Friday that puts new limits on nationwide injunctions, and reflects a new legal pathway that groups will likely turn to when challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful actions.
In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the high court struck down nationwide injunctions against Trump’s birthright citizenship order, narrowing their scope to provide relief to the specific plaintiff who is suing in a case rather than anyone who would be affected by the order. In addition to drawing sharp criticism from constitutional experts, the court’s decision is a major blow to pro-democracy groups that have been successfully challenging Trump’s lawlessness through the use of injunctions.
But the justices left the door open to challenging the administration in other ways, like class action lawsuits. The ACLU and its cohorts wasted no time using this legal pathway.
In a statement, the groups behind the new lawsuit noted that three lawsuits previously obtained nationwide injunctions protecting everyone subject to Trump’s executive order, but the Supreme Court’s decision narrowed those injunctions and potentially leaves children without protections.
“Every court to have looked at this cruel order agrees that it is unconstitutional,” Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney in this case, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court’s decision did not remotely suggest otherwise, and we are fighting to make sure President Trump cannot trample on the citizenship rights of a single child.”
Here’s a copy of their lawsuit:
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former longtime constitutional law professor, torched the Supreme Court’s decision and predicted that public interest groups would take the precise legal action now being taken by the ACLU and others.
“Today, the Supreme Court ridiculously reinterpreted the Judiciary Act of 1789 to block nationwide injunctions by federal district courts invalidating unlawful and unconstitutional executive actions that harm the rights of all Americans, all to soothe President Donald Trump’s wounded ego,” Raskin said in a statement.
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“This might provide some temporary psychological relief for President Trump,” said the Maryland congressman, “but it will prove to be a staggering political liability over the next year as people show up to every district court in the land making the same slam-dunk arguments that have prevailed everywhere they have been raised and also, almost certainly, bring a nationwide class action suit against this lawlessness.”
Raskin noted that four U.S. district courts and three U.S. appeals courts have all found Trump’s executive order to be “a blatant violation” of the 14th Amendment.
“Judge John C. Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan-appointee, said it was the easiest case he had decided in more than four decades on the bench,” he said. “Not a single court in the land has upheld the Executive Order.”
