Today, a federal judge in Seattle, WA temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship regardless of the parents’ immigration status. The case is one of five lawsuits being brought by 22 states and a number of immigrants rights groups across the country. Earlier this week, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and several other states, the District of Columbia and the City and County of San Francisco, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts that also challenges the Executive Order. The lawsuit seeks to invalidate the President’s Order and to enjoin any actions taken to implement it, stating that the Order violates the U.S. Constitution. The states will request immediate relief to prevent the President’s Order from taking effect.
In challenging The Order, Attorney General Campbell commented that it significantly and directly harms the states themselves as it will cause the coalition of states to lose federal funding for programs that they administer, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and foster care and adoption assistance programs, which all turn at least in part on the immigration status of the resident being served.