Reagan-Appointed Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order

A federal judge blocked President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship from taking effect on Thursday.

U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, said the order was “blatantly unconstitutional,” according to Reuters.

“I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that is a constitutional order,” Coughenour said, according to the Washington State Standard. “It boggles my mind.”

Washington, along with Oregon, Arizona and Illinois, initially sued the Trump administration on Tuesday. Several other Democratic state attorneys general and liberal groups followed with their own lawsuits.

One lawsuit led by New Jersey notes that over 153,000 children were born to two noncitizen parents in 2022.

“The Order harms the Plaintiff States directly by forcing state agencies to lose federal funding and incur substantial costs to provide essential and legally required medical care and social services to resident children subject to the Order,” Coughenour wrote on Thursday. “Plaintiff States’ residents are also irreparably harmed by depriving them of their constitutional right to citizenship and all the associated rights and benefits, including: subjecting them to risk of deportation and family separation; depriving them of access to federal funding for medical care and eligibility for basic public benefits that prevent child poverty and promote child health; and impacting their education, employment and health.”

Trump issued his order on “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” on his first day in office.

“[T]he Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” Trump’s order states. “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”