Posted on 01/22/25
| News Source: Maryland Matters
Washigton, D.C - Jan. 22, 2025 - Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown called birthright citizenship -- the notion that anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen -- "a reflection of our country’s ideals, a belief that every baby born on U.S. soil is a member of our great nation and deserves to play a part in its future." The lawsuit filed in Massachusetts by 18 states, the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco, says the 14th Amendment and repeat Supreme Court decisions have made it clear that citizenship is "unambiguously and expressly" endowed on anyone born here.
WASHINGTON — A day after President Donald Trump signed a slew of immigration-related executive orders, immigration researchers said during a Tuesday briefing they are scrutinizing the legal implications of the White House’s move to end birthright citizenship as well as sweeping directives barring asylum and more.
The ACLU and immigrant rights groups sued the Trump administration in U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire shortly after Trump signed the birthright citizenship order. On Tuesday, 18 state attorneys general also sued over the order, in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Those states include New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Additionally, state attorneys general from Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington sued the Trump administration in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle over birthright citizenship, in which people born in the United States are considered citizens — excluding the children of foreign diplomats — even if their parents are not.
Other executive orders Trump signed Monday night declare a national emergency at the southern border, end asylum and reinstate several harsh immigration policies from his first term.
“Executive orders do not change the fact that U.S. law provides for access to asylum … which I think will feature prominently in what I expect to be rapid litigation of these measures,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that studies migration and facilitated the press briefing.